LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OE AMERICA. 



OUR OWN CHURCH 



JOHN H. VINCENT 



Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church 




NEW YORK: HUNT & EA TON 
CINCINNA TI: CRANSTON & STOJVE 
1890 



1THE LI BEAUT | 
OF C ONCU SS* j 
WASHIKOTOMJ 



lOV CONGRESS U ^ ^ \ 



Copyright, 1890, by 
HUNT & EATON 
New York. 



PREFATORY. 



rPHE words which fill the pages of this little volume are for 
young Christians — for young Methodist Episcopal Chris- 
tians — and have been written to promote among them a 
thoughtful and lively and "Towing interest in their own Church, 
its history, doctrines, government, polity, and usages. 

We want a Church made up of Christlike and loyal Chris- 
tians, who first of all love and worship and serve Christ; who 
at the same lime truly love all who love Christ, whatever their 
denominational lines, and who also love well, loyally, and 
always their own denomination, and stand by it and stand up 
for it; being true to it when it is popular, and just as true 
when, for any reason, it does not meet the favor of the mul- 
titude. 

Young Methodist Episcopalians must be broad, liberal, gen- 
erous, and caiholic-spirited, while they are firm, fervent, steady, 
and uncompromising in their devotion to the Church they 
belong to — the Church which, to be at its best, must as fully 
as possible reproduce the doctrines, spirit, usages, and conduct 
of the Church of the first century. A Methodist should aim 
to be a "first century Christian" in this period of history 
which witnesses the closing of the nineteenth and the opening 
of the twentieth Christian century. 

John H. Vincent. 

Episcopal Residence, 
Buffalo, N. Y., March 21, 1890. 



OUR OWN CHURCH. 



X. 

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

u I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of 
Saints." — Apostles 1 Creed. 

HEKE are words of greeting, welcome, and 
counsel to the candidate for membership 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church ! 

You have " joined the Church." You are 
now a " probationer." In six months, if you 
and the Church agree, you may become a " full 
member." By a gradual process you thus ap- 
proach that great and divine institution — the 
Church— which God, who made the earth and 
the heavens, established ; the Church — com- 
posed of souls redeemed by the precious blood 
of Christ ; the Church — which begun in the 
early days of the race and has continued through 
all the ages; the Church— the "house of the 



0 



Our Own Church. 



living God," which lie built and blesses, and 
where he abides : the Church — " the pillar and 
ground of the truth," upholding, proclaiming, 
distributing, defending, and administering that 
truth for the good of men and the glory of God. 

You have joined the "Holy Catholic Church." 
In the Creed you professed at your baptism you 
say : " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." 
Remember, this is not the Roman Catholic 
Church. It is the "Holy Catholic Church." 
And there is a vast difference between the 
two — all the difference that there is between 
a gayly decorated Christmas-tree and the old 
oak that grows by the way-side, deep-rooted, 
wide-spreading; giving shade in the summer; 
holding a heart of life in the winter that no 
frosts can destroy; with nesting-nooks for birds, 
and perches for their hours of song; the old oak 
that takes firm hold of the soil and that sweeps 
the heavens ; the oak w r ith dew and song and 
sunshine on it, with memories of the long ago, 
and with promise for the centuries to come. 

Never let the gewgaws and glimmer and 
sweets of the Christmas-tree delude you. There 



The Holy Catholic Church. 7 

may be, indeed, beautiful green leaves on it. 
The life has not all gone ; but its doom is cer- 
tain. The Roman Catholic Church is a relic of 
paganism and of tyranny, with some good doc- 
trine in it, but so overloaded with tissue-paper 
and candles and glass baubles that one who knows 
what the living tree is grows tired of the dead, 
and longs for the life and strength and beauty 
of the grand old oak of the ages — " the Holy 
Catholic Church," where are blossom and shade 
and fruit and blessing. 

The Holy Catholic Church embraces every 
thing that is " true " in all the ages of Christian 
history, in all the phases of Christian worship, 
in all the schemes of Christian theology, in all 
the plans of Christian work. 

The Holy Catholic Church embraces all the 
truly good Christians of all ages, of all the 
schools, of all the nations, and of all the denom- 
inations. The real martyrs of the early centuries 
in Eome, Asia, and Egypt ; the true preachers, 
and the so-called "priests" of the Eoman and 
of the Greek Churches, who sincerely served 
God ; the faithful few in the household of 



8 



Oub Own Church. 



Caesar, among the valleys of Switzerland, in the 
monasteries of England, or in the mountains of 
Scotland; the honest servants of Jesus Christ 
among all the numberless " communions " — the 
Presbyterians, the Protestant Episcopalians, the 
Romanists, the Greek Catholics, the Reformed 
Churches, the Baptists, the Methodists of all 
classes — these, and all who every-where else, in 
the best way they can, worship God in the name 
of Jesus Christ, are members of the Holy Cath- 
olic Church. The patriarchs and the prophets 
of the Old Testament, the apostles and saints of 
the JSTew, the real saints of the early and the 
middle and the later ages, the Augustines and 
the San Bernards and Savonarolas, and the Cal- 
vins and Luthers, the Knoxes and Wesleys — 
these, all of them, were members of the Holy 
Catholic Church. 

And beyond, in the realm above, where apos- 
tles and martyrs are, where Jesus is made mani- 
fest and his people serve him, where "mother" 
is, and dear old "father" and the "children," 
where " before the throne they serve their 
Maker day and night," and sing halleluiahs — 



[ The Holy Catholic Church. 9 

there, too, is a part of the Holy Catholic Church 
of which you are now a member. 

Glorious body of Christ ! strong and true; apos- 
tolic and universal ; full of charity and good-will ; 
resplendent in history with deeds of heroes who 
counted not their lives dear unto them so that 
they might win Christ ; radiant with the glory of 
his presence who dwells among his people, giving 
them peace and filling their hearts with love. 

Into this noble fellowship you have come, 
for in joining the Methodist Episcopal Church 
you join a branch of the Holy Catholic Church 
which recognizes the whole body of Christ, and 
seeks to bless and help all, and enjoys commun- 
ion and fellowship with all. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has no 
" canons " which exclude true ministers of Jesus 
Christ of other Churches from its pulpits. It 
has no dogma of " apostolic succession " which 
limits the privileges of the ministry to a small 
and exclusive class. It has no "regulations" 
which render it impossible or difficult to frater- 
nize in Church service and Church work with 
other Christians. Its members belong to the Holy 



10 



Our Own Church. 



Catholic Chu7 % ch — the broad, large, fall, liberal, 
great-hearted Church that Christ established. 

Take the Protestant Episcopal Church, in con- 
trast — a Church organized after the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, and with a much smaller 
membership ; a branch of the Church in which 
there are, indeed, devout and faithful Christians. 
But, with singular pretentiousness, it claims to 
be the Church. Its canons refuse to allow cler- 
gymen of other denominations in its pulpits. It 
gives instructions to its young people which cul- 
tivate in them a spirit of exclusiveness which we 
believe to be opposed to the teachings of our 
Lord. I do not impeach the perfect sincerity of 
those who thus believe and teach, but I depre- 
cate it. 

Read, for example, the following questions 
and answers taken from the Catechism prepared 
by Dr. Morgan Dix, of New York, of Trinity 
Protestant Episcopal Church. These will give 
you a specimen of the teachings of that com- 
munion. True, there are men and women in 
the Church who do not accept these extreme 
views ; but they submit to them, and dare not 



The Holy Catholic Church. 11 

call the rector to an account ; and, moreover, 
they obey the canons which embody the spirit of 
the Trinity Catechism, and do not even seek to 
repeal them. They live by them, even if they 
do not believe them. 

Question. Does it, then, make no difference if we 
belong to some independent Church or sect, and not 
to a true branch of the Catholic Church ? 

Answer. It makes all the difference between obey- 
ing and disobeying Christ. 

Q. What is necessary to make any particular Church 
a true branch of the Catholic Church ? 

A. It must hold to the Creed of the Church, to 
the Apostolic Ministry, and to the Apostolic Sacra- 
ments. 

Q. Is it, then, enough to keep only the doctrine of 
the apostles ? 

A. No; we must be also of the apostolic fellowship. 

Q. How do we stay in the apostolic fellowship ? 

A. By staying in the fellowship of the bishops, 
their successors. 

# * # * * * 

Q. By whom, then, were sects founded ? 

A. By erring men ; not by Jesus Christ. 

In contrast with the Dix-Trinity Catechism, 
I quote from a little Catechism published by 
the Methodist Episcopal House, showing how 
much broader our own dear Church is in its 
views concerning the other branches of the 
Church of Christ: 



12 



Our Own Church. 



Question. Is there more than one true Church of 
Jeeus Christ ? 

Answer. There is but one true Church. 
Q. Who belong to it ? 

A. All who believe in and love the Lord Jesus 
Christ. These constitute the Holy Catholic Church. 
Q. What does Paul call it ? 

A. 4 'The whole family in heaven and earth.'" 
Eph. iii, 15. 

Q. Has this one true Church, more than one out- 
ward form ? 

A. It has many outward forms, usually called "de- 
nominations," such as the Baptist Church, the Con- 
gregational Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
the Presbvterian Church, the Protestart Episcopal 
Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church, and many 
others. 

Q. With which denomination or branch of the one 
Church of Christ are we connected ? 

A. With the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Let ns love all branches of the Holy Catholic 
Church, and let us cultivate charity toward 
those whose views so widely differ from our 
own. And let us faithfully defend the faith 
delivered unto the saints and make our own the 
ardent loyalty of the poet : 

"Beyond my highest joy 

I prize her heavenly ways, 
Her sweet communion, solemn vows, 

Her hymns of love and praise." 



The Antiquity of Methodism. 



13 



TI- 
THE ANTIQUITY OF METHODISM. 

" Among all nations . . . beginning at Jerusalem." 

METHODISM is now nearly nineteen hun- 
dred years old. It began with the life of 
the Christ, whom it worships, and whose teachings 
and work in the world^it perpetuates. We are 
not to be understood, of course, as claiming that 
the formal organization of the Methodist Epis- 
copal branch of the Holy Catholic Church took 
place nineteen centuries ago, although we believe 
that the earliest form and life of the Church 
were more nearly like that of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church of to-day than of any other 
branch of the Church now existing ; but it is 
not of the outward form we speak. Method- 
ism is a spirit and a doctrine. Methodism is 
Christianity. Dr. Chalmers said, " Methodism is 
Christianity in earnest." It is that or nothing. 
There is nothing in it that was not in Christian- 
ity in the beginning. There was nothing essen- 
tial in Christianity in the beginning that is not 



14 Oris Own Church. 



in Methodism now. Its doctrines are the doc- 
trines of Christ and of Paul. Its spirit is the 
spirit of Pentecost. Its methods are the methods 
of the apostolic Church — practical, far-reaching, 
wisely adapted to all peoples, the outgrowth of 
sound doctrine and of experimental piety. 

Methodism, as we now consider it, is not a 
" sect," nor is it a " form," but a spirit It is a 
life informing and employing a body of doctrine. 
See what New Testament doctrine, spirit, and 
activities are, and you have Methodism. Dr. 
Chalmers was right. 

Methodism has existed through all the ages 
in those elements which constitute the individ- 
uality and power of the Church. It has not 
always been called Methodism, but it has always 
been Methodism. The ecclesiastical forms 
which it assumes depend upon the exigencies 
of society, and upon the practical wisdom of 
the leaders who attempt to meet these exigen- 
cies. Spirit, doctrine, and service may find 
place in old institutions, or they may develop 
new institutions. The reality, is not, however, 
in the institutions, but in the essentials of truth 



The Antiquity of Methodism. 15 

and spirit by which the institutions are, for 
which they are, and without which they need 
not be. Fountains, with ample basins, jets, and 
decorations, are nothing without water. They 
are because of the water. Telegraphic posts 
and wires are worthless without the electric cur- 
rent. Ecclesiastical organizations are dead and 
useless things without doctrine and life. 

Now Methodism makes little account of 
Church forms and Church government. It 
leaves it to the decaying ecclesiastical stone and 
brick and bronze fountain-forms of Home and 
Canterbury to glorify such things. Methodism 
is doctrine and spirit — the essential, the perma- 
nent, the ancient, the apostolic, the divine ele- 
ments of the Church. 

Therefore Methodism is the most ancient life 
of the Church. Its continuity has never been 
broken. Its lines of descent are not corrupted 
by foul priests, profane and licentious bishops, 
the outrages of hierarchical power, the murders 
of inquisitions, the banter and sale of place and 
grace. Its succession is in the divine love and 
peace and strength which have come into hum- 



16 



Our Own Church. 



ble and devout hearts — plebeian, priestly, and 
princely — who have yielded to the indwelling 
grace of God. False doctrine and foul hearts 
break the succession, the basis of which is not 
human or dependent upon the will of popes, 
bishops, arid kings. The basis of the true suc- 
cession is in the spiritual life — in the deep-flow- 
ing river of divine Love, and is independent of 
scepter and miter, of sword and coffer, of coun- 
cil and Vatican. Such is the glorious unim- 
peachable, imperishable, apostolic succession — 
this Christly succession of Methodism. 

The true Church — " Christianity in earnest " 
— is a river flowing through all the centuries, 
spreading its healing waters in many streams all 
over the earth. How glorious was its success 
in the first century — how broad and deep and 
beautiful ! Those were the clays of a successful 
and jubilant Methodism. Read the records. 
Hear the shouts of triumph ! See the ingath- 
ering of souls ! Rejoice in the reports of those 
grand revivals ! Xo swinging " censers," ele- 
vated "host," or 'lighted candles in those days; 
no elaborate ritualistic ceremonies, discussions 



The Antiquity of Methodism. 17 



about " absolution," quarrels over cut and color 
of cassock, gown, and altar cloth. In those 
days the "word" and the "power" were all 
our Church cared for. People who emphasized 
in those days forms and successions and " end- 
less genealogies " ridiculed the spontaneity, in- 
tensity, informality, and "confusion" of the 
abounding life. They called these primitive 
Methodists " fools " and " fanatics ;" but the 
grand movement marched forward. 

A century or so later formality gained ground. 
Later still the main current of that first out- 
bursting stream sank out of sight in the arid 
deserts of ritualism, temporal ambition, greed 
of gain, and growth of hierarchical pretension. 
It swept on, indeed — an unbroken stream in 
hearts of unchurchly saints, hermits and monks, 
merchants and housewives — true souls, w r ho de- 
spised the sham of the " Church," and rejoiced 
in the "shame" of the Gospel. And in later 
ages the grand river broke forth again, in the 
days of Luther, and in deeper, broader, stronger 
current in the days of Wesley. " Christianity 

in earnest" — the old Church force, the original 

2 



18 



Our Own Church. 



apostolic Church life again blessed the world. 
It filled the old channels, poured into some of 
the old fountains, washed their dust away, and 
caused them to flow and shine in crystal bright- 
ness and refreshing power. So full was the 
outbursting stream of the old Church life that 
it formed new channels and new fountains. 
The limitations of English Church prejudice 
and bigotry and worldliness, that refused to rec- 
ognize the new outpouring of the old stream, 
could not restrain it. It gained daily and swept 
widely, and blessed every hamlet and city, and, 
in spite of the Established " Church," cut out 
new channels in England and America and the 
world over for its divine waters. All the Chris- 
tian channel beds of the globe are fuller and 
deeper and wider to-day because of that new 
outburst of Methodism. 

Old or new, every thing depends upon the 
stream. The new is, because of it, as old as the 
old, and the old is new again. But the ancient 
thing is the stream — not a few stones laid here 
and there through the centuries — not even the 
channels through which the stream flows, for 



The Antiquity of Methodism. 19 

the best channels of old streams are often the 
new ones cut out by their resistless currents. 
Methodism is doctrine and spirit — Christianity, 
" Christianity in earnest," and is the most an- 
cient element in the Church of Christ on the 
planet to-day. 

All these things have been said of that Holy 
Catholic force — Methodism, and not of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, which is only one, 
a very large one, to be sure, but only one of 
the many channels divinely formed by the pow- 
erful stream of " Christianity in earnest." The 
Methodist Episcopal Church is one development 
of Methodism — large, practical, spiritual, suc- 
cessful, and full of catholic spirit, aiming to do 
good to all, and ready to pour its waters into 
other fields to irrigate them, and into other 
streams to augment them. 

Let its broad, apostolic, beautiful, and benign 
ministry continue, and let its members rejoice 
in the antiquity and divinity of its doctrine, 
spirit, and methods ! 

Our Church glories, therefore, in its apostolic 
and pentecostal antecedents, and in its divine 



20 



Our Own Church. 



succession. It lias no sympathy with the dogma 
of a literal " apostolic succession," * as that 
theory is held and advocated to-day by repre- 
sentatives of a " visible Church" which claims 
to have the episcopacy as a third " order " from 
the apostles. We repudiate it. 

Our " succession" is a stainless, spotless, un- 
broken succession of truth and grace — God's 
truth, God's grace — a succession that flows on 
uncorrupted through the ages, independent of 
popes, bishops, and councils ; flowing from " the 
river of life," flowing on and ever. Glorious 
succession ! Glorious Church ! Let us be glad 
and grateful that our lot is cast among a people 
so free from bondage to ecclesiasticism and ritual- 
ism and vain devices of evil men, who, in dark 
ages, wore robes and miters, and ruled souls of 
men with rods of iron. 

* See Appendix. 



The Church and the World. 



21 



in. 

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 

■ : Come out from among them, and be ye separate." 

ONE of the temptations to which, in these 
days, our young Methodist Episcopal people 
are exposed, is the attempt to allure them from 
their own communion by the specious and carnal 
arguments based upon social standing, ecclesias- 
tical antiquity, and aesthetic service, in certain 
other Churches. They are invited to the " so- 
ciables." They are called upon and shown 
marked attentions by " society " people. They 
are invited to parties where the laxities of fash- 
ionable life, under most genial guise, are 
brought into contrast with the more limited 
provision for amusements in conscientious and 
strict Church society. They hear mild jokes at 
the expense of "Methodists" who " oppose fun 
and fashion and frolic, and who would turn 
parlors into prayer-meeting rooms." This social 
sarcasm has its influence. Our young people 



22 



Our Own Church. 



feel it, and sometimes fall under it. Or the 
venerable character of "the Church" is quoted, 
and its splendid service, its "wealth" and 
" taste " and " best society " praised. All these 
considerations have their weight with young 
people. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church is, in our 
judgment, the best representative on earth to- 
day of the original apostolic Church founded by 
Jesus Christ. Therefore we belong to it. It is 
a Church of Christ, an integrant part of the one 
Holy Catholic Church. It recognizes all com- 
munions which recognize Christ as their Head. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church is apostolic 
in its origin, in its doctrines, in its government, 
in its' usages, in its spirit, in its work, in its 
success. It is established to spread scriptural ho- 
liness — scriptural holiness, not vagaries, flights, 
fanaticisms— but the holiness enjoined in the 
Word and illustrated by the saints. 

Methodism embraces all classes of society. It 
began in the most cultured and honored circles 
of English society. It enrolls shepherds, fish- 
ermen, colliers, nobles, princes, and presidents. 



The Church and the "World. 23 



It has found its way into palaces and into coal- 
pits. Refined and cultivated women have de- 
voted themselves to its holy work, and enjoyed 
in elegant parlors delightful spiritual fellowship 
as they conversed on the things of the divine 
kingdom. Many eminent scholars, orators, 
statesmen, scientists, as well as plebeians, have 
been devoted Methodists. At its altars bow the 
lowly and the lofty — lowly all as they recognize 
the one God who is Father of all, the one Christ 
who is Saviour of all, the one Holy Spirit whose 
grace, like the sunlight, rests on lofty palm and 
cedar, and yet gives whiteness and fragrance to 
the lily of the valley. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church glories in 
the profound philosophy, wisdom, and script- 
ural authority of its doctrines, in the wideness 
of the mercy it proclaims, and in the power of 
the grace it upholds. It forgets mere circum- 
stance in its estimate of the worth of souls. It 
looks upon the lowliest of mortals, and remem- 
bers his immortal destiny. In humble places 
it visits and helps the poor and neglected, see- 
ing, by the eye of faith, the day not far distant 



24 



Our Own Church, 



when the garb of poverty shall be exchanged 
for the robes of the eternal city. Like its 
divine Founder, the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
Methodist Episcopal Church places great stress 
upon souls — souls that outweigh gold — souls 
that outshine diamonds — souls that outlast 
thrones — souls that shall live on when the stars 
perish. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church holds up 
high standards of Christian life. It believes that 
the spirit of the world is opposed to the spirit 
of Christ. It believes that the society of the 
world is hostile in temper and tendency to the 
true society of the Church, which is the society 
of heaven among men. It, therefore, disap- 
proves of worldly amusements, the associations 
and tendencies of which are downward. It re- 
quires all loyal communicants to deny them- 
selves ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live 
soberly and righteously and godly in this present 
world. The command, u Come out from among 
them, and be ye separate," is, with the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, a real command, and 
means what it says. While, on the one hand, it 



The Chuech and the Woeld, 25 



denounces asceticism and the nonsense of the 
monastery and nunnery, it forbids indulgence 
in the follies of worldly society, and seeks to 
turn the thought of its members toward the 
higher realm of spiritual taste, true culture, 
Christ-like refinement, and literary attainment, 
in subordination to moral heroism, divine aspi- 
ration, and Christian joy. It distinguishes be- 
tween sensuous society and rational society. 
The radical idea of the one is fleshly gratifica- 
tion, that of the other culture and character. 
It distinguishes between selfish society, which 
seeks " a good time," regardless of example and 
influence, and Christian society, which seeks the 
well-being of others, and makes large sacrifices 
for the good of others. 

All this is, indeed, against "the world," and 
it is also against the spirit of those Churches 
(if such there be) and those social circles calling 
themselves Christian who care more for the 
world than for Christ. 

In the days of the Son of man his disciples 
were exposed to precisely the same assaults of 
scorn and contempt which now greet those who 



20 



Our Own Church. 



seek truly to follow him. The principles which 
influence men do not change. Truth is al- 
ways the same. There is always an antag- 
onism between truth and error, between right 
and wrong. It requires as much self-sacrifice 
now to be a Christian as in the early days 
of ' Christianity. The same old enemies exist 
and assail. The same old arguments are 
used. The same old courage is necessary. 
Times and fashions may change, but principles 
are eternal. 

I imagine that I hear a young Jew of one of 
the "best families" in Jerusalem, in the days of 
the apostles, remonstrating against the devotion 
of young Christian disciples. "Ah ! " says our 
young Jewish Churchman, " our system is sus- 
tained by the rich and the great. The old fam- 
ilies with good blood and much gold and wide 
renown come to our services. Your Jesus was 
followed by beggars and represented by fish- 
ermen. He lived in a desert, had no resi- 
dence on the best street, and no access to the 
best families." 

So be it. And whether in the first century 



The Church and the World. 27 



or the nineteenth, the disciple of Christ •must 
stand with him, even if the rich and great and 
noble are to be sacrificed. 

I imagine I hear my Jewish ecclesiastic con- 
tinue : " Our system is old ; it dates back to the 
days of Levi and Aaron; the succession is unbro- 
ken. It is so grand to think as you look at the 
priest at the altar that he belongs to the ancient 
order ! As for your Jesus, who is he ? Have 
the high-priests ever recognized him ? Has the 
oil been poured on his head? Does he wear 
priestly robes ? Is he in the succession ? " Just 
as old Jews talked in the days of Christ some 
of his nominal followers talk to-day. They talk 
about "priests" and "altars," "robes" and 
"ritual," "ancient usages" and exclusive pre- 
rogatives. They say, "We are the trice Church. 
The rest of you are only < sects. 5 You have no 
ordinations that are valid. We are the only 
people of God." 

So be it. And in the nineteenth century, as in 
the first, the disciple of Christ must stand by him 
even if the figments of apostolic succession and 
ancient orders are utterly ignored. There is no 



28 Our Own Church. 



greater nonsense in all Church history than the 
claim of apostolic succession made, for example, 
by the Romish Church and by the Protestant 
Episcopal Church ; and it is well that our 
young people understand, at the very outset, 
the very absurdity of it. Let us be followers 
of Christ instead of Aaron, followers of Christ 
instead of Judas, followers of Christ instead of 
Peter. 

I imagine I again hear the young Jewish 
Churchman of the first century making his plea 
with the humble disciple of Christ: "Our sys- 
tem is liberal and free. You may stand well 
with us, and yet dance and play and live as 
you please. If you keep passover week, and 
observe the feast days, what does the rest of the 
year matter? In following the Nazarene you 
are limited and hedged in, required to deny 
yourself, and made a bondsman to conscience 
and duty. Your Jesus says: 'Strive to enter 
in at the strait gate, for strait is the gate and 
narrow is the way that leads to life eternal. 
Deny thyself, and take up thy cross, and follow 
me.' But we have no such absurd restrictions. 



The Church and the World. 



29 



We go to the temple ; we observe the services ; 
and then we live as we please. We don't let 
the doctrine or law of the Church interfere with 
our self-indulgence." 

So be it. And in the nineteenth century, as 
in the first, the disciple of Christ must stand 
by him, even if the dance, the card-table, the 
theater, and the wine-glass must be given up, 
and the lines sharply drawn between the world 
and the Church, between those who live for 
present sensual gratification and those who live 
for the life eternal. 

Again I hear the Jewish trifler, whose religion 
is an ideal and a form, exclaiming: " Our service 
is so elegant ! We have no poor grammar in our 
prayers. Our chants are exquisite and rendered 
by trained musicians ; our services according to 
ancient usage. We violate no law of taste. We 
conform to the highest standards. We are not 
interrupted by impertinent mendicants and 
lepers and lame men whose cries rend the air 
and mar the service. Your Jesus entered the 
city and came toward the temple the other day 
riding on an ass, and the common people and 



30 



Our Own Chctkcii. 



even the children shouted in unliturgical order 
at his passage. In our service we have no such 
deviation from propriety." 

So be it. And in the nineteenth century, as 
in the first, the disciples of Christ must stand 
by him even if noise and excitement and earnest 
desire sometimes break the silence of a public 
service, or afflict the morbid sensitiveness of 
people who care more for mode than matter, for 
taste than truth. We are not of this world. 
We must not be ruled by it. 

Better the Church which brings the Gospel to 
souls longing after the life eternal ; the Church 
founded by the Son of God, who came to give 
life eternal ; the Church inspired by the Spirit 
of God, who is the source of life eternal, than 
a Church made up of nobles, princes, rich men 
and social magnates, to whom ministers dare not 
preach the plain words of the Gospel lest they 
lose place, salary, and reputation. 

Better the Church that has its present con- 
nections with the exhaustless fountains of life 
eternal, yielding fresh supplies to-day from heav- 
enly reservoirs, than a Church basing its claims 



The Church and the World. 



upon broken arches, dilapidated and waterless 
aqueducts stretching from empty reservoirs to 
dusty cisterns. 

Better the Church that reiterates the words 
and retains the standards of the Lord Christ 
about self-denial, self-resistance, abandonment 
of the world and its lusts and pleasures, about 
love of God, love of men, and entire devotion 
to Him, than a Church that, for the sake of re- 
taining giddy youth in its communion, justifies 
all indulgence, requires no self-sacrifice, chants 
sweet music and preaches " lovely sermons," 
utters aesthetic and classic prayers, thus uniting 
Christ and Belial — the kingdom of darkness and 
the kingdom of light. 

Better the Church that rings with the cry of 
beggars at the beautiful gate, of souls aglow 
with the divine life at Pentecost, of souls that 
know their sins forgiven, than a Church that, to 
serve propriety, sacrifices piety, and rebukes, 
as did the Pharisees of old, the hosannas of the 
children in the temple, or the halleluiahs of the 
disciples when the tongues of fire fell from 
heaven upon their heads. 



32 Our Own Church. 

Of this one thing you may be certain: 
You cannot make the " Church " and the 
"world" one. You cannot have all the strength 
and faith and hope and joy of living for others 
in the Christly way, and at the same time enjoy 
the pride and sensuality and scorn for the hum- 
ble, and abandonment to pleasure, which charac- 
terize the world. 

You must make a decision. You must stand 
up valiantly for the Church-life as against the 
w T orld-life! You cannot play and feast under 
the enemy's flag and be accounted loyal soldiers 
of the great King. 

Choose promptly. Put yourself into positive 
relations with Christ, and let the world under- 
stand you. Let your prayer be : 

" Arm me with thy whole armour, Lord, 

Support my weakness with tby might ; 
Gird on my thigh thy conquering sword, 

And shield me in the threatening fight ; 
From faith to faith, from grace to grace, 

So in thy strength shall I go on, 
Till heaven and earth flee from thy face, 

And glory end what grace begun. " 



Broad and Narrow. 33 



zrv. 



BROAD AND NARROW. 

"Give heed to . . . thy doctrine." 

OTTNG Christian people are met in these 



i days by the objection to the Evangelical 
Churches — Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, 
and others — that they are rigid and severe and 
narrow in their doctrines. To this objection I 
wish to give some attention. 

It is easy to denounce positiveness of con- 
viction, and the consistency of action which 
follows it, as unworthy and narrow; and it is 
equally easy to glorify laxity of faith and gen- 
eral indifference to doctrine, both in theory and 
policy, as broad, large, and noble. 

The expulsion by the Conference of the Rev. 

Dr. from the ministry of the Methodist 

Episcopal Church, some years ago, was the occa- 
sion for many harsh utterances by people, in and 
out of the Church, on the subject of " breadth" 




3 



34 



Our Own Church. 



and of " narrowness," of "liberality," "free* 
dom of opinion," " freedom of speech," etc. 
Many honest souls were then, as they always 
will be, misled by specious and beguiling talk 
about " advanced ideas," " a new era," and " a 
new theology." 

The writer of these lines gave at the time, 
through the columns of the New York " Inde- 
pendent," a view of the whole question, as sug- 
gested by the case — a view so highly commended 
by wise and good men in and out of the Church, 
that he has yielded to the suggestion to put the 
article into more permanent shape. 

This is done without the slightest desire to re- 
flect upon the character of Dr. himself, for 

whom, indeed, the writer has much respect and 
admiration, nor to revive an old Conference dis- 
cussion, which would, certainly, be an unworthy 
aim; but to state, for the benefit of our intel- 
ligent young Methodist Episcopal people, who 
hear so much in these days about "liberality" 
and "breadth," the true philosophy of denomi- 
national opinions and administrations ; to show 
who the truly "broad people" are, and to enter 



Beoad and Naeeow. 



35 



protest against the frivolous and absurd claim 
that people "without fixed opinions" are the 
only progressive and liberal people of the age. 

With this introduction I reproduce the letter 
with the humble hope that it may be of service 
to the numerous thinking youths of our great 
and growing Church : 

Dr. has been expelled from the ministry 

of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The min- 
isters, his peers, did it. They did it after a 
careful "investigation" by the presiding elder 
and after a complete "trial" by the Conference. 
They did it after years of patient waiting and 
forbearance. They did it legally, according to 
the prescribed regulations of the Church. They 
did it kindly, with no malice or bitterness, and 
with much generous sympathy for the offender. 
They gave him time, counsel, and the right to 
challenge every one of the fifteen jurors who 
constituted the "select number" before whom 
he was tried. There was nothing cruel or 
that savored of persecution ; nothing bigoted 
or narrow in the act, or in the motive and 
manner thereof. It w r as done openly, for "good 



36 Our Own Church. 



and sufficient cause," in the spirit of love for 
the brother, and of loyalty to the cause of 
Christ. 

This act of the Conference does not 

silence Dr. as a preacher of his own 

views. It does not close his lips as a public 
teacher. It does not deprive him of a "living." 
It does not impoverish him or his family. It is 
to him a great financial gain. It does not aim 
to " bring him to terms," or to modify his opin- 
ions against his own free-will. It does not seek 
to make him disloyal to his convictions. It 
simply denies him the right officially to repre- 
sent the Methodist Episcopal Church. There 
is in this no " persecution " by the Conference. 
If there be persecution in the case at all, it is on 
the other side ; for he who caricatures and thus 
misrepresents the doctrines of a party or a 
Church, holding them up to public contempt, 
is himself the persecutor. 

The action of the Conference is a protest 
against the publication, under Church author- 
ity, of vague and unsettled opinions, and of 
personal doubts concerning the fundamentals 



Broad and Narrow. 



3T 



of evangelical theology. Every thoughtful man 
has doubts and anxieties concerning every ques- 
tion that touches human destiny and the relation 
of man to God. Personal assurance of divine 
verities is won only after struggle with doubt. 
But the Conference believes that the parading 
of private doubts by the pulpit is unwise and 
injurious. It believes that there is positive 
truth, on which the soul may rest implicitly 
even where the philosophy eludes its grasp. 
There is an evangelical school which accepts the 
whole Bible as from God, and believes in it as 
a supernatural revelation. Methodism believes 
this, and believes, moreover, in the easy possi- 
bility of a personal religious experience, and in 
the all-sufficiency of grace for all souls. Her 
distinctive usages — the class-meeting, the itin- 
erant ministry, and the connectional scheme of 
government — are but outgrowths of her broad 
individual and experimental doctrines. She 
commissions her ministers to proclaim certain- 
ties and not doubts, doctrines and not specula- 
tions. Her ministers may privately struggle 
with the problems they encounter. They are 



38 



Our Own Church. 



compelled to discuss these problems with inquire 
ers who submit them ; but they have no right 
publicly to disseminate them. To do so is either 
weak or wicked. As Prof. Robertson Smith 
wisely says : " I never introduce such questions 
into the pulpit. Positive truth — truth which 
can be proved, illustrated, applied — can be found 
sufficient to occupy all a minister's time in pub- 
lic instruction, and employ all his abilities in its 
illustration. Such positive truth, and such only, 
has power to turn men to righteousness, and to 
confirm and edify them therein." 

Abraham Lincoln had, undoubtedly, many 
misgivings as to the prospects and policy of the 
administration, military and civil, during the 
Civil War. He spent many an anxious hour, 
and considered many a serious question which 
he never gave to the public. Indeed, to have 
published a tithe of his fears would have been 
worse than disloyalty. Dr. — — seems to be 
uncertain and unsettled. Instead of waiting, 
reading, thinking, conversing with his peers 
and superiors in private, he publishes his theo- 
ries and hesitations to the world, and, in the 




Broad and Narrow, 39 



publishing, sometimes puts so much scorn and 
irony as to betray more than an intellectual 
doubt. He is really a semi-evangelical liberal- 
ise and belongs to the school of Dr. Freeman 
Clarke and Edward Everett Hale. There is no 
argument in favor of his retention as a repre- 
sentative of Methodist theology which would 
not hold good for the introduction to our min- 
istry of the gentlemen above named. In all 

commendable elements of character Dr. 

is worthy of association with them; but the 
Conference believes that neither they nor he 
are proper representatives of Methodism. 

The action of the Conference is a protest 
against the misrepresentation of the Church, in 
its own pulpit, by a man pledged to present and 
defend its doctrines. Correct or not, the im- 
pression does prevail among the brethren that 

Dr. has, for years, made public statements 

which place the Church in an unfavorable light; 
as when, for example, he leaves his audience to 
infer that Methodists believe "the butcher 
theory " of the atonement ; and his slurs and 
innuendoes against the Church and against the 



40 



Our Own Church. 



orthodox theology have, more than once, made 
friends weep and foes applaud. 

The action of the Conference is a protest 
against narrowness in interpretation. It believes 
that the doctrines which relate to God have an 
infinite side which it is impossible for man fully 

to comprehend. When, therefore, Dr. 

claims to state the full contents of the Atone- 
ment in his "moral " theory, he limits and lowers 
a sublime and divine doctrine which, in the 
thought of the Church, involves legal as well 
as moral relations and effects. He sneers at the 
doctrine of " the blood ; " a doctrine which sets 
forth the bearings of justice and righteousness 
(as well as of love and mercy) upon God's gov- 
ernment and man's character ; a doctrine which 
no human philosophy can comprehend ; but 
which the Evangelical Church in all the ages 
has held; which infidels and rationalists have 
abused and caricatured ; but which, like deep 
and wide-reaching foundations, upholds the very 
throne of God. And on this foundation one 
may rest and be at peace, even though he may 
not see, measure, and map it out. Against this 



Broad and Narrow. 



41 



narrowness tlie Conference protests, as well as 
against the coarse and violent assaults which, it 

believes that Dr. has made upon the sacred 

and precious mystery of the blood of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

The action of the Conference is a protest 
against the modification by mere human theo- 
ries, through human sympathies, of the divine 
warnings and appeals. There are those who 
teach the certain restoration of the wicked, after 
ages of punishment. They say that somehow, 
sometime, something shall be done in God's 
universe to do away with the last result of sin. 
Well, who has not thought, with wonder and 
longing, in those directions ? and who would 
not be glad of such an announcement? But 
there are ten thousand wishable things in hu- 
man life that one has no ground to expect and 
no right to promise. The Methodist theology 
finds nothing in the Bible to justify a word of 
hope, in a Christian pulpit, concerning the finally 
impenitent. Private longings and speculations 
are one thing; public proclamations by authority 
altogether another thing. The Methodist theol- 



42 Our Owx Chukcii. 

ogy sees nothing but "blackness of darkness" 
over the fate of the persistent sinner. Its voice 
to him is a voice of warning, solemn and em- 
phatic, with no tone of mercy in it beyond the 
present life. What God may hold in the life 
that is to come in possibilities of grace, consist- 
ent with the fearful threatenings of his word, 1 
know not; but this I know, that the Bible gives 
me no right to proclaim any hope beyond to the 
incorrigible sinner here. I shut out every ray 
of light from his future, that sin, in the pres- 
ent, may seem to him the black and dreadful 

thing it is. Dr. has put a star, big and 

brilliant, in the impenitent sinner's sky. Meth- 
odism does not do this ; Methodism never did 
it ; dares not do it. The Conference says that 

even Dr. shall not do it by its authority ; 

and it says this, not to limit, or assail, or punish, 
or persecute him, but for the sake of loyalty to 
the word of God. 

The action of the Conference is a protest 
against the interruption of certain experiments 
now being made in society by the Church; and 
this protest is made in the interest of science, 



Broad akd Narrow. 43 

and is no more narrow and unjust than the ac- 
tion of physicists, physicians, and politicians, 
every day and every- where. In the old-fash- 
ioned debating society, which did so much to 
promote thought and encourage reading among 
the people, the question for debate was plainly 
stated, " sides " taken, and representatives of 
the "affirmitive" and the " negative" chosen. 
When, through malice, mischief, or ignorance, 
the representatives of one side made argument 
in favor of his opponents, he was promptly re- 
proved by his associates, and, if he persisted in 
it, was peremptorily sent to the 66 side he rep- 
resented and defended, and to which he really 
belonged. He was not silenced, but properly 
assigned. And in this new adjustment there 
was neither narrowness nor injustice. The re- 
manding by his associates of a Republican to 
the Democrats, when he no longer represents 
Republican ideas and policies, is no proof of 
bigotry and persecution. He goes to his own 
place, uses his power of speech and suffrage 
according to his own views ; nor is he thereby 
ousted from citizenship, nor is his patriotism 



Our Own Church. 



challenged. Mr. Tyndal makes an experiment 
in physics. Mr. Huxley enters the laboratory, 
and, by the smoking of a cigar or the jarring 
of a table, complicates and embarrasses the con- 
ditions of certain experiments in which Mr. 
Tyndal is interested. Who will charge the lat- 
ter with narrowness for requesting Mr. Huxley 
to remove to another place or conform to the 
necessities of the occasion ? To-day the schools 
of theology are experimenting on society. To 
thoughtful men the denominational subdivis- 
ions, with their varied creeds, constitutions, and 
modes of work, are but splendid experiments 
upon human nature, with the divine ideas and 
forces which revelation introduces ; and the 
broadest and most scientific minds most prize 
the sharply-defined lines by which the denom- 
inations are separated. "With malice toward 
none, and with charity for all," they hold tena- 
ciously to the creeds as conditions of an impor- 
tant experiment, in wdiich not only men but 
angels are interested. 

Here are Calvinists, Arminians, Liberalists, 
Congregationalists, Baptists, each with some dis- 



Broad and Narrow. 45 



tinguishing idea of biblical theology or church 
ordinance or church government, which they 
deem of importance to the race, and which, 
with pious and scientific intent, they seek to test 
among men. It is important that the favorable 
conditions for this testing be protected. While 
in some things the schools fully agree, and can, 
to the measure of their agreement, affiliate and 
co-operate, it is extremely desirable that, on 
other points, each should be left unembarrassed. 
If a man believe in a settled ministry so firmly 
that he cannot serve in the " itinerancy," he has 
no right to remain in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. And that Church is not narrow if she 
care more for a great principle than an indi- 
vidual. If a man believe in "immersion" as 
the only baptism, there is a place where his 
faith can find its opportunity. If a man believe 
in the Episcopal rather than in the Congrega- 
tional mode of Church government, his place 
is easily defined. If a man be " liberal " rather 
than "evangelical," (believing that the Atone- 
ment may be fathomed by the reason of man ; 
believing in the partial inspiration of Scripture 



46 



Our Own Church. 



and in the possibility of future probation,) there 
are platforms on which he can stand, and to 
these platforms he should at once repair. And 
if, for any purpose, he persists in remaining 
among the debaters and experimenters to whose 
side he does not belong, and whose work his 
presence retards, it is fitting for them kindly, 
firmly, and with unmistakable emphasis to say 
to him, " Go out from us, since thou art no 
longer of us." Physicists, politicians, physi- 
cians, do it. The Church has always done it, 
and always will do it, and that in the interest 
of true progress and culture. 

It is claimed that Dr. does not, after all, 

hold or preach views out of harmony with the 
Methodist Church ; that her standards are so 
indefinite and general as not to cover the points 
of his alleged divergence ; and that he is but 
showing how wide a range of belief is compat- 
ible with fidelity to her creeds. No one knows 

better than Dr. how sophistical his claim 

is. It does not deserve a moment's considera- 
tion. One has but to read a single sermon of 
Dr. 's (that preached in Church, on 



Broad and Narrow. 47 



Sunday evening, before the Annual Conference 
of 1880) to know that he does not represent 
Methodism. 

Prof. Swing, of Chicago, fairly put the case 
when he recently said to a Presbyterian clergy- 
man, " Dr. is not a Methodist, and has no 

business to remain in the Church." 

It is alleged that other men, high in official 
position in the Methodist Episcopal Church, are 

also "heretical." This will not save Dr. . 

His pulpit deviations are in the essentials of 
faith. If any one else in the Church (be he 
pastor, secretary, agent, or bishop) similarly 
promulgates doctrines which antagonize evan- 
gelical and Methodist theology, let him also be 
tried and rejected, and this in the interest of the 
broadest catholicity and the tenderest charity. 

Let me urge young Methodist Episcopal peo- 
ple to read the Scriptures diligently and devout- 
ly, to study candidly the standards of the Church, 
and they will find the Methodist Episcopal 
Church really among the broadest and fairest 
of all the Christian denominations. 



48 



Our Own Church. 



The Methodist Episcopal Church does not 
require much of one who would, in sincerity of 
soul, seek the life of love and obedience which 
" salvation" involves. It does not require much 
"theology," or the acceptance of many "points" 
in a "creed." It asks only concerning motive 
and spirit, and then gives Church privileges — 
preaching, prayer, sacraments, fellowship, bib- 
lical training, and pastoral oversight. With 
very little faith, and a mere atom of a creed, 
one may enjoy the blessings which the apostolic 
Church offers. 

But when one attempts to teach by authority 
in the Church, as exhorter, class-leader, Sunday- 
school teacher, parent, or preacher, the Church 
does have an understanding as to what is to be 
taught. And this is right and good and broad ! 



The Classmates' Meeting. 49 



■V. 

THE CLASSMATES' MEETING. 

"They spake often one to another." 

HEN young people have had a pleasant 
party, or an excursion, they like to get 
together and to talk about it. 

When students who were at school together, 
after a long separation meet again, they take 
great pleasure in reviewing the toils and joys 
and struggles of school life. As " classmates " 
they meet and talk. When a society of any 
sort has had a peculiarly successful time in car- 
rying forward some enterprise, the members 
talk and talk and talk about it. 

Two young fellows were planning for a 
summer trip over the Atlantic. For months be- 
forehand they would meet and talk and devise 
pleasant schemes for making the journey a suc- 
cess. They loved to talk about it. And dur- 
ing the trip, as they rode in European cars or 
4 




50 



Our Own Church. 



walked among the hedges of England, or exam- 
ined museums and picture galleries, they kept 
up, day after day, a brisk conversation. They 
talked over their experiences : how they hap- 
pened to start at all; how they felt as the 
fc< Good-bye" was spoken; how they enjoyed 
ocean life ; how they were affected by the sight 
of land ; which they regard as their " best 
day" up to the present time; what they antici- 
pate from the journey yet to be prosecuted ; 
what difficulties they apprehend ; what plans 
they have for overcoming them ; how the home- 
start will seem ; and how the sight of native 
land again will delight them. About every 
thing they talk — day and night they talk. And 
the talk does them good. It makes them more 
united. It removes some of their difficulties. 
It increases their interest in the journey. It 
fixes on their memories its varied experiences. 

In this world every body talks. By talk peo- 
ple give knowledge to others. By talk they test 
the knowledge given. By talk they awaken an 
interest in others. By talk they may increase 
their influence over others. 



The Classmates' Meeting. 51 



On all subjects men talk — on home life, on 
music, art, science, business, politics, daily news. 
Is it strange that men are sometimes inclined to 
talk on religion ? Is any subject more impor- 
tant ? Is any subject more interesting ? 

People may talk too much. They may talk 
in a wrong spirit. Talk may hurt. The tongue 
is sharper sometimes than a "sword." St. James 
says it is a "fire." People may talk too much 
even on religion — as when they tire people out, 
when they talk unwisely, w T hen they talk on the 
wrong side, when they substitute talk for deeds 
and character. But so people may talk too much 
and in the wrong way on a variety of subjects. 
I have heard too much business talk, too much 
political talk, too much idle talk, and sometimes 
too much religious talk — but not often. And 
still it is possible to ring the bell of the church 
too often, too long, and too loud. 

There are two or three kinds of religious talk. 
There is, for example, the talk of religious con- 
troversy, which finds place when people discuss 
the "doctrine" or the "form" of religion — the 
" trinity," the " intermediate state," the " second 



52 



Our Own Church. 



coming," the " mode of baptism," " Sabbath 
vs. Sunday," and the like. I have seen people 
very angry in disputes over such questions. 
Sometimes, and under wise restraint, religious 
discussions are useful. They are too often 
abused, and lead to abuse. 

There is the religious talk didactic, in which 
plenty of advice is given, in prayer-meeting, in 
class-meeting, and in private. It is very easy 
kind of talk, that is, for him who gives the ad- 
vice ; not always so easy for him to whom it is 
given. It is useful sometimes, especially when 
he who orfers it takes it out of his own daily 
life. When out of a daily habit of cheerfulness 
he speaks of Christian joy, or when out of 
every-day honesty he talks about integrity — his 
words weigh their full worth. When talk 
comes from the wrong person, especially if 
given with professional glibness, or in a profes- 
sional tone, it puts the honest-hearted hearer in 
mind of the clatter of an empty wagon, and is 
annoying arid even, at times, vexatious. 

There is religious talk experimental. It is 
the telling of how one felt once, and what one 



The Classmates' Meeting. 53 



once thought, and of how one feels and thinks 
now. It is a report from within, by the only 
tongue that can tell. Experimental talk may 
have several objects. It may be designed to 
give proof to others of the words of promise in 
the Bible. God says that he will, by his Spirit, 
do certain things for the soul of him who 
believes ; that he will give assurance of pardon, 
peace, joy, strength, hope. Now when I do 
believe, and do receive what God promises, I 
only do what I owe to my fellow-men when I 
tell them about it. I add my testimony to the 
testimony of believers in all the world, and 
prove to others (some of whom greatly need 
and want proof of that kind) the truth of the 
promises. 

Wise talk about one's experience may correct 
one's own notions about himself. I am not al- 
ways sure of my feelings— as to their origin and 
their healthfulness. I may mistake my own 
moods and character as I may mistake other 
people's looks, motives, and conduct. When I 
talk about my experience, he to whom I talk 
may be able to correct my wrong views, remove 



54 



Our Own Church. 



my doubts and difficulties, and show me liow I 
err in my conclusions. Talk about his own ex- 
perience may commit one to more definite views 
and more decided conduct. By expression 
my character may become stronger, my views 
clearer, my devotion to Christ more ardent. It 
may be "a cross," as we call it, to talk about 
one's self, especially about one's religious aims, 
feelings, doubts, discouragements, and resolu- 
tions. The " bearing of the cross " may be the 
very thing needed to give positiveness to pro- 
fession and influence. It is a mistake to talk 
too much about experience, or to talk to any 
body and every body indiscriminately. It is a 
mistake to talk before too many people about 
one's inward struggles and doubts. But it is 
a great mistake not to talk at all on personal 
aims, desires, and delights. One may thereby 
lose an opportunity to witness for Christ and to 
influence others to seek Christ. 

There is another kind of religious talk which 
is not controversial, nor didactic ; neither is it, 
directly, experimental. It is a self-forgetting 
talk about Christ — his person, character, and 



The Classmates' Meeting. 55 

offices — until one finds his heart aglow with 
the light and love of Christ. It does not begin 
with a look within at all. It begins with a 
look upward toward Christ. It ends with an 
unsought warmth within. It does not begin 
with self, but with Christ. It meets Christ. It 
walks with Christ. It talks with Christ. It 
listens to Christ as he opens the Scriptures and 
reveals himself there in its history, its doctrine, 
its promises. And all at once, as Christ is seen 
to fill all the Scripture, he seems to fill the soul, 
and you afterward say to your neighbor : "Did 
not our heart burn within us as he talked with 
us by the way and opened to us the Script- 
ures ! " Thus looking at Christ loosens the 
tongue. You see him and are delighted with 
his wisdom and love, and your delight finds 
words. You tell it. You tell it because you 
cannot help telling it. You tell it because you 
are so glad you know it. You tell it because 
you want other people to know how great and 
blessed and mighty a Saviour the Lord Jesus 
Christ is. He does not seem to be a dream or 
a doctrine, but a friend near and precious. Per- 



56 



Our Own Church. 



Laps, if you had begun by looking at yourself 
you would have had nothing to say about him, 
nor about yourself ; but beginning to look at 
him, a iire began to burn in your inmost heart, 
and Christ gives you experience and you tell it. 
And as you tell it you feel an increase of the 
love that kindles it. 

In the Methodist Episcopal Church — as in all 
Methodist Churches, from the little class of 
earnest disciples in Galilee to this very day-^ 
the believers in Christ have been in the habit 
of coming together to talk. In the days of 
waiting, before Christ came, " they that feared 
the Lord spake often one to another." In the 
days of Christ the classmates of his blessed 
school met often together in upper rooms, on 
mountain tops, in desert places, and by the sea- 
side, and they talked and talked and talked. 
They talked about their fears, their hopes, their 
doubts, their longings. They talked about him 
and his kingdom, his grace and his promises, 
After he left them they talked on, and prayed, 
and received the Holy Spirit in those glorious 
primitive class-meetings of the earliest Church. 



The Classmates 5 Meeting, 



57 



Glad classmates ! Glorious classmates' meet- 
ings ! 

Methodism revived the old plan of the apos- 
tolic days. To this day "class-meetings 55 are 
held in all Methodist branches of the Church. 
Sometimes they are poorly attended. Some- 
times they are crowded. Sometimes they are dull 
and almost lifeless. Sometimes they are full of 
spiritual power. Young people are often found 
in them. Too often they are attended because 
enjoyed only by the old. members of the Church. 

Grand institution is the class-meeting of the 
Church ! I commend it to every young Chris- 
tian. Yes, some class-meetings are dull, and its 
regular attendants have old ways and sometimes 
odd ways of telling "experience. 55 Some of the 
classmates are very peculiar, and use a set of 
stereotyped phrases, and, never having been 
educated, talk very poor grammar; and some 
are timid and scarcely know what to say, and so 
they say what they "really didn 5 t exactly intend 
to say; 5 ' and some confound "happy feelings 55 
with religious character, and go off into tearful 
and sometimes noisy talk and shouts ; and some 



58 



Our Own Church. 



forget to look to Christ, and only look at them- 
selves. Cold, cynical, unbelieving hearts may find 
something to smile at in one of these class-meet- 
ings, but, after all, what a blessing they are to the 
Church ; to the young, to the old, to the tempted, 
to the bereaved, to the discouraged! What 
shadows they drive away ! "What burdens they 
lift ! What joy they bring ! 

The neglect of the " class " is one of the sad 
mistakes of certain Christians to-day. I write 
to young Methodist Episcopal Christians to 
plead with them on this subject. 

This is not the place to point out the errors 
of class-leaders, or to give plans for improving 
the class-meeting. I may suggest that we need 
more class-leaders, and more of them women ; 
and we need to put more of the class-meeting 
element into our Sunday-school classes ; and in 
all social meetings, whether for prayer or fel- 
lowship, we need more of the Bible — its passages 
about Christ, wdio he is, what he can do, what 
he has promised, and how we can be more like 
him and the more glorify him. And we need 
to have more wise instruction given to our 



The Classmates' Meeting. 59 

young people as to the claims of the class, that 
they, as classmates in the school of Christ, may 
meet more frequently under spiritual, sensible 
leaders, and talk together about the Lord and 
his words and his ways, may put themselves on 
the side of Christ and his Church, and thus help 
to swell the current of Christian influence. 

Let me give you, dear young Christians, a few 
words of counsel : 

1. If a company of you w r ould like to organize 
a little " classmates' meeting " of your own, 
rather than attend any one of the classes now 
organized in your church, go to the pastor and 
tell him about your preference. Let him appoint 
leader and time and place. Abide by his advice 
in the matter. He is your chief shepherd. 
He knows what is best for his flock. It would 
be unfair to organize any meeting without his 
consent. You will find him glad to give both 
consent and counsel. 

2. When meetings are appointed always at- 
tend. Go most certainly and most promptly 
when you feel least inclined to go. Be gov- 
erned by a sense of duty in this particular. 



60 Ouk Own Church. 



Mr. Wesley says, " Trample under foot that en- 
thusiastic doctrine, that * we are not to do good 
unless our hearts he free to it? " One of the 
things you most need in the training of char- 
acter is the strengthening of the will. Nothing 
helps in this like the doing of duty from prin- 
ciple when one's feelings are least inclined that 
way. Go to the meeting because you ought 
The more of this kind of self-control you exer- 
cise the stronger you will be, and the sooner 
you will come to delight in all duty. 

3. Speak or not, as you prefer. Try to speak, 
but be true to yourself in every word you do 
speak. Avoid asking yourself what impi*ession 
your testimony may make on others concerning 
you. Care for such impression may blight your 
best aspirations. Be true to Christ while you 
are true to yourself. It matters little what 
your associates think of you. Of this be very 
sure, they will easily read any hollowness or 
pretense in your looks or testimony. There is 
something in human nature that reads human 
nature without words and beyond words and 
in spite of words. Be true to the truth, and 



The Classmates' Meeting. 61 

your speech will "be with grace, seasoned with 
salt." 

4. Do not feel bound to follow any particular 
order, nor to use set terms or phrases. Stand 
up to speak, or remain seated. Never mind how 
other people talk or what they do. Speak your 
own honest convictions in the way that seems 
best to you. 

5. Do not feel bound to tell to any body else 
the deepest and most secret struggles of your 
heart. Use good sense in this. Some true 
things you might tell might do no good, and 
might do much harm to others. 

6. Speak chiefly of Christ, how you think 
concerning him, how his "yoke" seems to you, 
what you know of his "liberty," and quote many 
of his own words. The important theme of 
Christian life is Christ. Let your talk be about 
him, and not about yourself, except as thinking 
about him your tongue is touched into testi- 
mony by his grace in your heart. 

7. Take your Bible with you to the class. 
Head it while you wait for other members to 
come. Quote it as you are inclined. Perhaps 



62 Our Own Church. 



a short reading from the book may be the best 
contribution you can sometimes make to the 
profit of your classmates. 

8. Carry the best aspirations of the happiest 
class-hour into your daily life. Take the class- 
room atmosphere home with you to kitchen and 
parlor. Take it to street and school, shop and 
field. Live all the day in the tone of your talk 
at the classmates' meeting. Fill parlors with 
it, and your " society " temptations will be 
reduced. 

9. Turn the class-meeting into a council-fire, 
and around it discuss practical work. You love 
Christ ; then work for him. Yon want to be 
like him ; then try to work as he worked. 
Consult with your classmates about visiting and 
reading to invalids, about teaching in Sunday- 
school, about encouraging young people to 
read good books, about inviting neighbors to 
attend church, about helping in local mis- 
sionary, temperance, reform, and other useful 
work. Fill your souls with great thoughts 
about Christ, and your lives with gracious deeds 
for Christ. 



The Classmates' Meeting. 63 



10. Avoid fault-finding, uncharity, and all 
ill-will. Be gentle and helpful toward your 
classmates. Strive to grow in grace daily. Seek 
the " sweet persuasion " that the Holy Spirit 
gives that you are a child of God. Prove, to 
yourself and others, by purity, patience, and active 
service, that you do not mistake the "voice." Let 
good deeds put the seal on good words, and let the 
classmates go forth weekly from their meeting 
to serve God. 

You will be interested to read what our be- 
loved little Church Hand-book, the " Disci- 
pline," says about " Classes and Class-meetings," 
" The Design of the Organization," etc. 

CLASSES AND CLASS-MEETINGS. 

The design of the organization of classes and the appoint- 
ment of leaders is — 

To establish a system of pastoral oversight that shall 
effectively reach every member of the Church. 

To establish and keep up a meeting for social and religious 
worship, for instruction, encouragement, and admonition, that 
shall be a profitable means of grace to our people. 

To carry out, unless other measures be adopted, a financial 
plan for the raising of moneys. 

The primary object of distributing the members of the 
Church into classes is to secure the subpastoral oversight 
made necessary by our itinerant economy. In order to secure 



64: Our Own Church. 



this oversight, let the classes, wherever practicable, be com- 
posed of not more than twenty persons, and let the leader re« 
port at each Quarterly Conference the condition of his class, 
as follows : Number of members in his class ; number of proba- 
tioners; average attendance ; number habitually absent ; num- 
ber of class-meetings held ; number who contribute to the 
support of the church ; number of visits made ; number of 
heads of families in the class, and what proportion of them 
observe f amity worship; number of Church papers taken by 
class-members ; miscellaneous matters. 

Let each leader be careful to inquire how every soul of his 
class prospers ; not only how each person outwardly observes 
the rules, but how he grows in the knowledge and love of God. 

Let the leaders converse with those who nave the charge 
of their circuits and stations frequently and freely. 

In order to render our class-meetings interesting and profit- 
able, remove improper leaders; see that all the leaders be of 
sound judgment and truly devoted to God. 

In the arrangement of class-meetings two or more classes 
may meet together, and be carried on according to such plan 
as shall be agreed upon by the leaders in concurrence with the 
preacher in charge. 

Let care be observed that they do not fall into formality 
through the use of a uniform method. Let speaking be volun- 
tary or the exercises conversational, the leader taking such 
measures as may best assist in making the services fresh, 
spiritual, and of permanent religious profit. 

Let the leaders be directed to such a course of reading and 
study as shall best qualify them for their work; especially let 
such books be recommended as will tend to increase their 
knowledge of the Scriptures and make them familiar with 
those passages best adapted to Christian edification. When- 
ever practicable, let the preachers examine the leaders in the 
studies recommended. 



Our Settled Itinerancy. 65 



VI. 

OUR SETTLED ITINERANCY. 

" Let us go into the next towns." 

THE itinerancy is the name given to a system 
of ministerial supply by which pastors are 
changed from time to time from one field of 
labor to another. They serve a church for a 
limited term, and then go to another church, and 
then another. 

Most ministers in churches of all denomina- 
tions are itinerants. We find the smallest per- 
centage of men who have, all their ministerial 
lives, been pastors of one church. All the 
Churches have an itinerancy. You will find it in 
the Presbyterian Church and in the Baptist and 
Congregational Churches ; indeed, every-where. 

There are two ministries : The itinerant sys- 
tem of the " settled ministry," and the settled 
ministry of the " itinerancy." The latter is the 
splendid, steady, working system of that method- 
teal Church organization known as Methodism 
— the modern development of " Christianity in 



66 Our Own Church. 



earnest" — with its wise, rational, practical, effi- 
cient methods of work. It has tested thoroughly 
the itinerant plan. 

The "itinerancy of the settled ministry" is 
found in all the Churches outside of our own ; 
among them the Protestant Episcopal, Presby- 
terian, Baptist, Congregational, and Lutheran. 
Ministers change. Few remain for life. Very 
few for ten years. They itinerate when they 
grow tired of one place, or think they can be 
more useful elsewhere ; or when their people 
grow tired of them, and also think they can be 
more useful elsewhere; or when a small minority 
of their influential people think a " change" 
would be profitable. Then the settled minister 
begins to itinerate. He itinerates as a "supply" 
to fill vacant pulpits. He itinerates as a "candi- 
date" to find a vacant pulpit that he would like 
to fill. He seeks — and often finds. Not always, 
for an alarmingly large proportion of the min- 
isters who belong to the settled ministry are 
without pulpits — thousands of them, and an 
alarmingly large proportion of churches are 
without pastors. The minister seeks, and when 



Our Settled Itinerancy. 67 



he finds he " settles." No wonder people smile 

when it is reported that " The Rev. has 

been settled over Church." There is only- 
one thing more amusing. It is to hear him 
preach a sermon in favor of a " settled ministry," 
and point out the " defects of the itinerancy." 
But it is a good thing for him to have that ser- 
mon on hand. He can preach it often — as he 
itinerates and settles, itinerates and settles, as 
the years go by. And we must not condemn 
him too emphatically. He does good. 

The " ministry of the settled itinerancy " is 
another form of ministerial supply. It provides 
an intermediary agency in a system of bishops 
and presiding elders, and encourages expression 
of preference by both preachers and people. 
There is on the part of both, for the good of 
both, a reference of the questions "who" and 
"where" to godly men whose experience and 
wisdom may be trusted. 

Let us test the system by results. What 
are the facts in Methodism ? No church with- 
out a pastor ; no pastor without a church, for a 
single Sabbath; little friction anywhere; mar- 



68 



Our Own Church. 



velous harmony, activity, and success every- 
where. There are some ministers and laymen 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church who would 
like to see some modification of the plan — the 
extension of the time of possible pastoral service 
in a single church to a longer but limited term. 
A very few advocates of extension would remove 
all restriction and allow a pastor to receive an- 
nual appointments for an indefinite time. But 
the voice of the Church has, with singular una- 
nimity, indorsed the itinerant system as a 
whole. The latest attempts to lengthen the 
pastoral limit have been successful, and now 
five years is the limitation. Yet the compar- 
atively small number of ministers and charges 
which availed themselves of the former ex- 
treme limit of three years seemed to jus- 
tify the conservative policy of the Church in 
reference to this question. But let us follow the 
leadings of providence. 

The ministry of the settled itinerancy has 
many advantages to people and to preachers. 

It gives " talent " a fair chance to assert itself 
and take its place of opportunity and pre-emi- 



Our Settled Itinerancy. 69 

nence. It provides for the expression of pref- 
erence on the part of preachers and people. It 
makes it every-way desirable for the appointing 
power, if possible, to gratify both. It provides 
safeguards by which any abuse of power may be 
brought to speedy arraignment and punishment. 
It saves preachers and people a world of anxiety. 
It discourages the organization of permanent 
cliques or parties in the local church. It culti- 
vates the spirit of mutual forbearance. It gives 
the various classes of people in a church a di- 
versity of " talent" suited to their several tastes 
and needs — and all this without developing the 
partisan spirit. It distributes ministerial ability 
— and this builds up many sides of the church. 
"What one man omits his successor supplies. It 
throws the responsibility of the continuous life 
of the church upon the laity, and not upon the 
pulpit. It develops local working force. Local 
preachers, class-leaders, and Sunday-school work- 
ers become a body of permanent pastors, so that 
the affairs of the church are in the same hands 
for years, whatever the ministerial changes may 
be; and in this local board of permanent pastors 



70 



Our Own Church. 



the itinerant pastor has wise and experienced 
counselors. It also guarantees the frequent and 
various reiteration of the fundamental truths 
of the Gospel. — 

The settled itinerancy is a great blessing to 
the minister himself. If he be a thoughtful and 
studious man, it gives him rare opportunity for 
the study of human nature, the revision of ser- 
mons, and the reading of current theological 
and general literature. No system so develops 
preaching power and pastoral efficiency. It in- 
cites to promptness, system, and fidelity in 
pastoral work. The limit of time, understood 
from the beginning, impels him to industry and 
faithfulness. 

The itinerancy secures to a pastor a delightful 
social life, widening his circle of choice friends 
through passing years and in many places. It 
gives him perfect independence of the local lim- 
itations which are created by local affiliations, 
and by a desire to conciliate public opinion and 
the "powers that be" in church and community. 
It makes him a " voice " from God to a people, 
to whom he comes by a divine commission, 



Our Settled Itinerancy. 71 

among whom lie speaks only for an appointed 
season, of whom he is sufficiently independent 
while with them to proclaim fearlessly the whole 
truth, and from whom he goes with wealth of 
experience and the firmness of a new resolve 
to labor more wisely and more energetically in 
another field. His itinerating life becomes a 
school of theology and of character. 

The system is not " oppressive.' 5 No men are 
less oppressed than Methodist ministers. They 
are as independent a class of men as one can find 
in America. The itinerancy is vastly more free 
from the discomfort which follows the exercise 
of a superior's will and authority than the army 
and navy in this republican government. The 
young miss who " pities the wife of a Methodist 
minister subject to bishops, and likely at any 
time to be removed," looks with coveting eyes 
on subalterns of army and navy, forgetting what 
impotent things they are in the grasp of superior 
power, over which they have no influence, and 
from which, except in extreme cases, they can 
take no appeal. Ah, little sympathizing maiden, 
your itinerant preacher is a king as compared 



72 



Our Own Church. 



with your lieutenant, captain, major, or colonel 
in army or navy ! 

Nor is the itinerancy " destructive of social 
life and sympathy." The new pastor is already 
known. He has his Conference reputation. He 
comes a new pastor, but not a stranger to the 
congregation. A hearty welcome awaits him. 
The parsonage is made warm, clean, and ready. 
Friends gather to greet him and his family. If 
he would be popular and attract society in the 
settled ministry, he has superior facilities for 
the same in the itinerancy. When he leaves 
he goes by the operation of a general law, not 
through local strife. His best qualities remain 
as a pleasant possession to his people. He is 
put into the sacred place of the old pastors. His 
good work is remembered. His faults are likely 
to be forgotten. His friends still love him. 
His opponents do not annoy him. 

The local church, through this system, ac- 
quires an inheritance of talent, service, and sym- 
pathy in the pastors it has had. And these still 
remain in the Conference, accessible, visiting 
now and then their old parishioners, preaching 



Our Settled Itinerancy. 73 

in tlie old pulpit, recalling the old times, warm- 
ing the hearts of the converts of their ministry, 
"who, if they have a pardonable preference for 
the preacher who led them to Christ, may, by his 
visit, gain a new impulse toward the kingdom. 
Rich, indeed, are our ministers and churches in 
the love and memory thus promoted ! 

" But this constant moving, how hard it is ! " 
Yes, in the settled ministry, where no provision, 
is made for systematic " moving," and where 
there are no permanent parsonages with perma- 
nent furniture — it is hard to move so often. 
But spare your sympathy for the itinerant who 
moves the personal effects of his family once 
every two or three years from pa: image to par- 
sonage. Tour wealthy resident of Fifth Avenue, 
who goes to Saratoga, or Cape May, the White 
Mountains, or Europe, summer after summer — 
packing up innumerable trunks, preparing to 
close the house for three months ; moving out, 
adjusting furniture and goods at the " summer 
residence" or the hotel, coming back, getting 
the winter home into running order again — six 
movings in three years — why, young reader, 



74 Our Owx Church. 



your millionaire and his family, who sneer at 
the movings and discomforts of the traveling 
ministry, move five or six times as often as the 
ministers whom they commiserate. 

"But that permanent furniture in a parson- 
age — who wants to have a house with furniture 
in it that other people have used ?" O! dainty 
friend, why don't you object to the hotel furni- 
ture at Cape May or Fifth Avenue Hotel ? You 
enjoy that, although in one season it is used by 
twenty times as many different people as the 
furniture of a parsonage in twenty years. Non- 
sense, little fault-finder ! Your objection has no 
weight. Soap and water and paint and varnish 
and taste and industry easily make old things new 
and fresh and clean. And "old furniture" is 
the fashion nowadays ! 

We know of no serious and unanswerable 
objections to the itinerancy. It has its toils 
and cares, but it is a delightful life, full of 
novelty to the young, full of opportunity to 
the old. It is a useful life — a life of divine 
aims and inspirations. It has achieved w T onders 
for Church and nation. 



Our Settled Itinerancf. 75 

It is, indeed, a pilgrimage. What else is 
human life? How many families stay in one 
house or in one place for any great length of 
time % And how soon all come to the grave ! 
Bat this itinerancy is a pilgrimage, with Christ 
as it guide, heaven as its goal, and helpful 
service as its object. 

"What happy hearts have gathered about par- 
sonage firesides! What noble lives have been 
begun and what splendid sacrifices have been 
made in these old parsonages of Methodism ! 
And what glorious translations from earth to 
heaven have they witnessed ! 

Sometimes a young man who has been edu- 
cated in the itinerant's home, and who has by 
father's professional position been admitted into 
good society — a class of society to which, per- 
haps, he could never otherwise have had access 
— is heard to complain against or ridicule the 
itinerancy. He hears people who never studied 
the subject speak lightly of it. He joins in 
their adverse criticism. Perhaps he goes into 
more " fashionable circles," unites with a more 
"fashionable church," forsakes the church that 



76 Our Own Church. 

gave him all the position and education he lias, 
and ridicules the "itinerant system." His sister 
admits what silly girls say abont its disadvan- 
tages, and is tempted to find, in other circles, 
her church and social home. 

Young friends ! sons and daughters of Metli- 
odist ministers! stand by your home, your father, 
your mother ! Stand by the Church that made 
you all that you are ! Study its history ; and if 
you admire heroism and advancement you will 
find its records full of both. Study its economy ; 
and if you admire sound philosophy and prac- 
tical method, you will delight in the ways, as 
well as in the doctrine and spirit, of your be- 
loved Church! 

But, be loyal to your antecedents. Do not 
allow the Church that made you to be misrep- 
resented by people who are ignorant of her 
record and doctrine and work. Speak bold 
words for her. Live and die in her communion. 
Use your influence to build up that branch of 
the Church in which your father and mother 
spent their lives, and to which yon owe intel- 
ligent and perpetual loyalty ! 



Earnest Christians. 77 



VII. 

EARNEST CHRISTIANS. 

"Thy will be done." 

IF Methodism is Christianity, Methodists 
should, of course, be Christians. And if 
" Methodism is Christianity in earnest," Meth- 
odists should be earnest Christians. 

Now earnest Christians are those who have 
the thing and not merely the theory, the fact 
and not merely the form. They hold the doc- 
trine in both letter and spirit. "What their 
intellects know and their lips say, their hearts 
feel and their lives prove. They not only pos- 
sess religious truth, but religious truth possesses 
them, captures them, masters them, fills them. 
The head is full of it. The conscience is quick 
and tender because of it. The heart is warmed 
by it. The will is strong in it. The tongue 
tells it. The eyes, at times, shine with it. And 
the steady-going, every-day living at home, at 



78 



Our Own Church. 



school, at business, as well as at church and 
class-meeting, demonstrates its power. Our 
religion is from heaven. It is supernatural. It 
has divine energy in it. 

To earnest Christians the truths of Christian- 
ity are real. They are serious, holy, splendid, 
eternal verities. God is, and is rewarder. He 
is not far from every one of us. In him we 
live and move and have our being. He is holy, 
and loathes sin. He is gracious, and pities the 
sinner. He is Love, and folds to his heart the 
penitent believer and fills that heart with peace 
— with love — with joy— such as the world has 
not and cannot give. 

To earnest Christians Christ is a real being, 
divine and spotless ; bringing the holy Father 
and the guilty prodigal together, by his death of 
atonement, by his resurrection of power, by his 
Spirit of regeneration. And this Holy Spirit is 
real — divine, omnipotent, eager to awaken and 
quicken the sinner, and to strengthen and wit- 
ness and abide within him, and to guide him 
every day, and to sanctify him wholly, to fill 
him w T ith divine love, for divine work here and 



Earnest Christians. 79 

for divine fellowship hereafter. Thus " Theol- 
ogy" becomes personal and vital. It is not a 
matter of books and creeds and sermons, but of 
life and action — a reality. 

Earnest Christians do not always feel the 
same, but they hold on to Christ. In darkness 
they trust and wait and work on. In sunshine 
they are glad. They are faithful to God in 
hours of good feeling and in hours of gloomy 
feeling. They are like the needle — true to the 
pole whether the warm sun of July shines upon 
it or the storms of January cover it with ice 
and snow. 

Earnest Christians test and prove their faith 
and feeling by works. They are, and they go, 
and do. Christian doctrines with them are not 
choice seeds wrapped up in pretty papers and 
placed in boxes on shelves, with scientific names 
to tell what they are, and figures to show how 
much they are worth. They are rather seeds in 
good ground — sprouting, growing, blooming, 
and bearing fruit. "What they yield tells what 
they are worth. 

Earnest Christians visit the sick, comfort the 



80 Our Own Church. 



bereaved, read to the blind, give to the poor, 
teach the children, feel practically interested in 
mission work at home and abroad, in reforms of 
every kind. They are deeply interested in the 
country, so talking and so voting that there may 
be pure laws and wise men to execute them. 
They account nothing unimportant that con- 
cerns man — his temporal, social, moral, spiritual 
life. If the temperance work needs an advocate 
in a town, or if a great moral question is dragged 
into politics and needs public discussion, every 
body knows which pulpitis sure to speak out 
on the right side, and with perfect fearlessness. 
Methodism believes in a religion that must go 
on missions of faithful reproof and gracious 
invitation — every- where. It has its eye on 
heaven, but it believes in bringing as much of 
heaven to the earth as possible. 

Earnest Christians know that earnestness must 
be fed by truth and fellowship and prayer. 
They insist on much Bible reading, on compari- 
son of Christian experiences, on united and fer- 
vent prayer, on hearty singing, on practical 
work with people for their souls' sake. Hence 



Earnest Christians. 81 



Methodists are famous for revivals, and for speak* 
ing plain words to sinners from the pulpit and in 
private. Indeed, when a minister of another 
denomination (Presbyterian, Congregational, 
Baptist) is very active and talks with unusual 
feeling, and goes into religious work with his 
whole soul, people say, " He is a regular Meth- 
odist." When a prayer-meeting in some other 
church is full of heartiness and spiritual power, 
it is called "a Methodist prayer-meeting." Dr. 
Chalmers said the true thing when he called 
Methodism " Christianity in earnest." Method 
on fire is always full of power. We glorify sys- 
tem, but we seek the Spirit also. 

Earnest Christians go so far over to the right 
and safe side that every body knows where to 
find them on those questions concerning which 
there is no specific " Thus saith the Lord, 55 but 
which are left to the judgment of true souls 
and the spirit of self-sacrifice for the neighbors 
good. They say, "Don 5 t let us tamper with 
things in which may lurk evil to weak or im- 
periled brethren. 55 Therefore genuine Method- 
ists do not patronize the theater, attend dances, 
6 



82 Our Own Church. 



or play cards. If a Methodist does siicli things, 
every body discounts him. Even worldly people 
say of him, " That's out of place in a Meth- 
odist." And all this is not because Methodists 
are narrow, but because they are broad and 
tender-hearted and want to help and not hinder 
the true upward progress of society. They want 
to be uncompromising, positive, and loyal to 
the highest life of love and service. It is a 
grand thing to be decided. There are rest and 
strength and joy in decision. 

All Methodists do not attain this standard. 
That is a sad fact. But thousands and tens of 
thousands do, and this is the idea and spirit of 
the Church-development known as Methodism, 
and toward it we all should aspire, and for it we 
should woik ; all of us ; always and in all places. 
This is our ideal. 

My young reader, are you an earnest Chris- 
tian? This is the great question. And here 
are test-questions which may aid you in giving 
answer : 

Is religious truth a real thing in your life? 
Does it move you to think and ask questions, and 



Earnest Christians. 



83 



wonder and desire to know, and to be troubled 
when you are uncertain, and to be uncomfortable 
when you think how far you are from the life 
your religious ideas require you to live ? 

Do you believe in God, and in Jesus 
Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, and in eternal 
life? 

Do you know (with a knowledge that takes 
hold of you) that you are a sinner against God's 
law, and that you can never make amends for 
your past sins, and never undo what evil you 
have done by any possible good you may do ? 

Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only 
hope you can have — Jesus Christ the mediator 
between God and man — Jesus Christ who be- 
came flesh and died and rose from the dead and 
is now in the heavenly places % Do you believe 
this with your heart ? 

Do you give yourself to Him of your own 
will, with a glad heart, to be his — his servant, 
his disciple, his friend, his brother? Do you 
leave your case with him as a boy involved in 
debt leaves his aifairs in the hands of his father, 
who has promised to look after every thing and 



84 



Ocr Own Church. 



settle every outstanding account? Do you leave 
your case with Jesus Christ as a sick man who 
has "given up all hope" in himself, leaves his 
case with the new physician who has come — a 
man of great skill and wide fame? Do you 
turn yourself over to Jesus Christ as a voyager 
across the Atlantic surrenders himself to steamer 
and captain — depending upon them every hour 
of his journey? 

Is all this faith and surrender practical ? And 
is it steady ? Does it hold good only when you 
"feel good?" or is it like an honest man's bar- 
gain — firm through thick and thin, in sun and 
storm, in gloom and gladness, in winter and 
summer? Are you a pledged Christian all the 
time and every-where ? Are you enlisted — a 
new but a true recruit in the army ? Asleep, 
awake, elated, depressed, praised, hated — are 
you all the time, all the same, so far as purpose 
and profession are concerned ? Do " all the 
folks " know it ? Are you not ashamed of it ? 
Do you show your colors and stand by them ? 
A great deal of religion is "warfare" in which 
one must live without sight but "by faith," 



Earnest Christians. 



85 



without feeling but "by faith." It is like school- 
life iii which one is enrolled and assigned to his 
place and appointed to his lessons, and must go 
on steadily whether his soul is inflamed with 
ambition and hope, or discouraged by poor 
health, dull intellect, and difficult tasks. The 
true student simply holds fast and goes on. 
The true disciple in the school of Christ does 
the same. He holds fast and goes on. Do 
you ? 

Do you put yourself into training as athletes 
do— going through the required drill to give 
suppleness to the joints, strength to the mus- 
cles, and steadiness to the nerves ? Do you put 
yourself into right conditions ? Do you compel 
yourself to do your duty in this respect whether 
you feel like it or not ? Do you pray every 
day ? Do you every day read a portion of 
Scripture ? Do you attend prayer-meeting and 
class-meeting and Sunday-school and preaching? 
Do you help people? Do you give of your 
means to advance the Gospel ? Are you a good 
student in the art of spiritual living ? Are you 
a good athlete in Christian life ? 



86 Our Own Church. 



Do you keep in mind every-where your 
religious relations and professions and respon- 
sibilities ? Do you refuse to do " worldly 55 
things because of tlieir influence on others and 
on yourself, and because of the place you hold 
in the Church ? Are you willing that every 
body should know that you are a Christian ? 
And are you, therefore, willing to be pro- 
nounced " Puritanic " and " Methodistic " and 
" over-particular ? " Can you bear the "shame" 
of the Gospel — in the eyes of worldly and 
frivolous people ? 

Do you find will and life obeying conscience ? 
Do you gain victories over the flesh ? Do you 
conquer temptation? Do yon avoid secret sin? 
—sins of the flesh, sins of the passions, sins of 
the imagination, sins of envy and pride and 
temper? If you cannot "feel happy as some 
do," can you conquer self and sensuous society 
and Satan ? Does the Gospel truth give you 
principle, and does this Gospel principle rule 
your daily life ? 

When you go wrong do you at once go back 
to Christ, and ask his forgiveness and his help ? 



Earnest Christians. 87 



Do you seek to please him and to hare peace in 
him ? This is your privilege. 

Do you ever have a " sweet persuasion " that 
you are a child of God ? ~No audible voice tells 
you so. No visible sign assures you. But is 
there a sweet, restful feeling in your heart that 
seems to sing, 

" My God is reconciled, 

His pardoning voice I hear, 
He owns me for his child, 

I can no longer fear ; 
With confidence I now draw nigh, 
And Father, Abba, Father cry?" 

Are you called by a voice within to lines of 
duty ? Do you obey it ? Do you love to obey 
it ? Is your life guided by an inner leading — 
a word in the heart inspired by the word 
of God ? 

Do conviction of Bible truth and desire to be 
a Christian and surrender to Christ bloom into 
all-absorbing love for God and man ? Does a 
strange joy sometimes fill your heart — as the 
warm sun and sweet fragrance of roses fill a 
June day? Can you rejoice in the Lord? Does 



88 



Our Own Church. 



heaven seem a glorious reality to you? And 
is earth glorious because of the divine life you 
lead ? Have you seasons when you seem to live 
in the land of Beulah, with perfect rest and the 
assurance of hope ? And can you understand 
the Bible revelations about heaven because you 
have in your own heart a taste of heaven ? 

Dear young Christian, all these things are pos- 
sible to you. But remember that the triumphs 
of victory are preceded by the awkwardness of 
the drill, the fatigue of the march, the weari- 
ness of the camp, and the perils of the battle- 
field. Enlist, drill, endure, fight, wait — and in 
the end wear the crown of victory ! Sing : 

u Thy saints in all this glorious war, 
Shall conquer though they die; 

They see the triumph from afar — 
By faith they bring it nigh! " 



The Holy Communion. 



89 



THE HOLY COMMUNION. 

"In remembrance of me." 

EVERY three months, or perhaps every 
month, what you and many call the "sacra- 
ment" is administered' in your church. You call 
the day of its administration " Communion Sun- 
day." By the sacrament you mean the sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper, although that is no more a 
sacrament than is the sacrament of baptism. The 
word " sacramentum " among the Romans signi- 
fied the oath of loyalty to his country which the 
Roman soldier assumed. Some people speak of 
this service as the " communion," and in the En- 
glish Church it is called the "Holy Communion." 
The word "communion" is from the Greek 
word which means fellowship, and it implies a 
communion or fellowship between Christ and 
his people, and between the people themselves. 
Paul speaks of the " communion of the blood of 
Christ " and of " the communion of the body of 



90 Our Own Church. 



Christ " — symbols and means through which 
union with Christ and union among believers 
are indicated and promoted. This sacrament is 
also called the " eucharist," from a word which 
means thanksgiving. It is called "the feast" — 
that is, a feast of those having the grace it com- 
memorates. Thus we see that this solemn and 
impressive ordinance, or service, has several 
names. The service itself is vastly more im- 
portant than the name, and still more important 
is the spirit in which it is observed. 

Jesus instituted this feast. It was on the 
night before his crucifixion. His disciples were 
filled with uncertainty and with sadness. They 
did not know all that was to happen. His words, 
his looks, his voice foreshadowed a great sorrow, 
and there in the upper room, in the solemn hour 
of night, he ordained the supper you celebrate. 
"Do this," he said, "in remembrance of me," 
and Paul gives a most impressive account of it 
in his letter to the Corinthians, where he says 
(E. V.) : " For I received of the Lord that which 
also I delivered unto you, how that the Lord 
Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed 



The Holy Communion. 



91 



took bread ; and when he had given thanks, he 
brake it, and said, This is my body, which is 
broken for you : this do in remembrance of me. 
In like manner also the cup, after supper, say- 
ing, This cup is the new covenant in my blood : 
this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of 
me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink 
the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he 
come." If you care at all for Jesus Christ, his 
person, his character, his work, his cause, you 
will be interested in the Lord's Supper, and you 
will be willing, if not eager, to share in it ; and 
you should be anxious to know all that is meant 
by the act. The holy sacrament has been greatly 
abused by the ritualistic and Romish Churches, 
they giving a peculiar significance to it which 
is not justified by any thing that is spoken in the 
word of God. And sometimes they make it a 
species of idolatry, and, to a great degree, render 
it void by their superstitions. 

The sacrament of the Lord's Supper seems to 
be a very little and, apparently, unimportant 
thing, and yet little things may represent very 
great things. A kiss may be a pledge of perpetual 



92 



Our Own Church. 



love. The simple bowing of the head in legal 
assent may seal a covenant that no human power 
can break. The flag of your nation, which may 
be put into your pocket, represents power and 
wealth and courage and a wonderful history. 
A plain gold ring put on your finger by a dying 
mother, as she asks you to think of her at the 
twilight, may not be worth much in dollars and 
cents, but no money could buy it from you. 
Her dying request may not involve much — a 
simple look at the ring in act of remembrance — 
but it brings tears to your eyes and fills your 
heart with memories, and you live more care- 
fully because of it all. When Jesus withdrew 
his physical presence from earth he left a monu- 
ment, a memorial, of that presence here. He 
established an observance. It is a very simple 
thing — this eating of bread and drinking of wine. 
There is no great " feast" in it. It satisfies 
neither hunger nor thirst. It is the meaning in 
it, and not the matter of -it, that gives it real 
value. Jesus did not tell his disciples how it 
was to be observed. He gave no particular and 
minute directions about the details. He did not 



The Holy Communion. 93 



specify any particular posture of body. Jesus 
Christ never cared for forms. He never cares 
for the mode of taking the Lord's Supper or of 
receiving baptism. He denounced over-careful- 
ness about such little matters. His whole Gos- 
pel is opposed to such carefulness. The Romish 
Church has put pagan rites into the sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper, has turned the service into 
superstitious observance, and has thereby lost 
the sense and sweetness and power of it ; indeed, 
destroying its whole character. Jesus Christ 
instituted a simple sacred souvenir of his life, 
his words, his death, and makes it a means of 
grace to all those who humbly and believingly 
receive it. 

Now, although the observance of the com- 
munion is apparently a little thing, it is really 
a great thing, full of meaning. Let us see 
what we do every time we partake of the sac- 
rament. 

The act recalls a wonderful history. It sug- 
gests him who appointed it; his life, deeds, 
words, spirit — which made the most wonderful 
career that the world has ever witnessed. It 



94 



Our Own Church. 



points the whole world to a record of facts. It 
points this age of unbelief to facts — not the less 
real because remote as to time and place of their 
occurrence. It is therefore an act of solemn 
declaration to the world of the reality of a his- 
tory which more radically and directly affects 
the world than any other chapter in it. Is 
it useless to celebrate the Fourth of July ? 
The history recalled by the Communion is worth 
more to man than the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Christ by his life and death gave 
freedom to the whole race, and his life itself was 
wonderful, beautiful, tender, unselfish, and full 
of heroism. 

The act obeys the command of a loving friend, 
Christ loved man as man. He loved him even 
unto death. On the eve of the greatest display 
of love that the universe ever saw he asked all who 
believe in him to commemorate for all time that 
love and that death. This is a small thing. 
Shall we think on Sabbath evening of a moth- 
er's dying request and forget his command 
whose love is deeper, more enduring, and worth 
more to us than a mother's love? 



The Holy Communion. 



05 



The act gives us the opportunity to make 
public our affection for Christ before the world. 
It is a way of declaring to the world our alle- 
giance to Christ. It is a way of showing our 
colors. It says to our fellow-Christians, " I am 
one of your company ; I want to be associated 
with you rather than with the world." It says 
to our associates in school, shop, and society, " I 
am one who believes in Jesus Christ and his 
Church. I am trying to acquire a character like 
his." It is a way of winning others to Christ, 
to the Bible, to the Church, and saying, "I be- 
lieve with all my heart in all those things." It 
is an act in connection with which the grace of 
Christ is given. It is a sign and a means. It 
is not a loadstone in which power was deposited 
long ago, a sort of talisman, as the ritualistic 
and Romish Churches teach, but it is a present 
means of grace, to be received with faith and 
thus to be made a channel of spiritual power. 

The act has hope in it. It looks forward as 
well as backward : forward to his coming again 
to the world ; forward to our coming to him ; 
forward to the feast of his saints in heaven. 



96 



Our Own Church. 



It is an act in which all Christendom joins • 
a service of the Holy Catholic Church. All de- 
nominations observe it. It is a bond of union ; 
union in testimony to the facts of history ; union 
in obedience to the command of Christ ; union 
in hope of everlasting communion ; union in de- 
votion to the person of our Lord. 

It is an act which the Church has always per- 
formed. It is an ancient service, antedating 
cathedrals and castles. It allies us to the first 
century, and to that night in which Christ insti- 
tuted it. 

It is an act in which each particular Church 
is interested. Ever since your Church stood it 
has witnessed this ordinance. The old saints 
kept this feast. The old ministers administered 
it. "What glorious times have been witnessed as 
bowed multitudes have received the bread and 
wine in recognition of their Redeemer, in con- 
fession of their faith, and in solemn covenant of 
service ! 

The act has a family value. Your father and 
mother, your dearest friends, wherever they are, 
observe it. Are they absent? You meet them 



The Holy Communion. 



97 



at the table of the Lord. Nothing can be more 
perfect as a bond of sympathy than this habit of 
observing the communion on given days wher- 
ever you live and wherever you wander. 

The act has, above all, a personal value. It is 
a way of personal approach to God ; of confession, 
of renewed consecration. It helps the soul to 
take a new step. It gives grace to resist temp- 
tation. 

"When we have in the observance of the sac- 
rament of the Lord's Supper recalled the won- 
derful history of Christ, obeyed his command as 
the command of a loving friend, embraced the 
opportunity for making public our devotion to 
Christ, looked forward with hope, looked around 
the globe with charity, looked backward with 
reverent memory, and felt all the sacredness as- 
sociated w r ith our own Church, our own family, 
and our owm spiritual lives — when we have done 
all these things there still remains a deeper and 
more important truth which lies at the very 
foundation of this most sacred institution. The 
fact which gives real significance to the em- 
blems, and real value to the service, is that atone- 
7 



98 



Our Own Church. 



merit which Christ made for us by his death, 
which we commemorate as we receive the broken 
bread and the sacred wine. 

The doctrine of the atonement is a profound 
mystery. What great truths are involved in it 
— truths relating to God and to Christianity and 
to God's government over men — our human in- 
tellects can never fathom. Angels desire to 
look into these things. Figures of speech are 
employed in the Holy Scriptures which express 
in the most emphatic way the importance of the 
sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. We were as 
men in debt, with no resources and no possibil- 
ity of finding resources sufficient to cancel that 
debt. And lo, One came who paid it all ! And 
by his death, in some mysterious way, the price 
was paid and our debt absolutely canceled. We 
were as men in bondage, with no power to break 
the bars and chains which held us, and no arm 
of earthly friends strong enough, and no author- 
ity competent, to set us free. But the Lord 
Jesus made our release a blessed possibility. 
These great thoughts should come into our 
minds as we receive the holy communion. 



The Holy Communion. 



99 



How it is possible for God to be just and yet 
justify the ungodly is a problem which law- 
makers cannot solve. How to sustain the dig- 
nity and honor of the divine government, and 
yet to extend the scepter of grace to an offend- 
ing subject — this is a mystery. Without at- 
tempting to explain it we receive the teachings 
of the Holy Scriptures and simply accept them. 
Christ died to sustain the glory and purity of 
the law, and yet to make possible to every one 
pardon and peace and immortal blessedness. It 
is this doctrine, clothed in mystery, that we bring 
before our minds as we bend in reverence and 
awe at the communion table. He died that we 
might not die. He poured out his blood as a 
ransom for our sins, and through his obedience 
our obedience, although offenders, is made pos- 
sible. We are in danger of being shocked by 
the strangeness of this doctrine. We cannot 
comprehend it, and therefore we are in danger 
of repelling it. But, if God's word teaches any 
thing, it teaches this relation of the soul to Christ, 
and conditions spiritual life upon the acceptance 
of him as one crucified for our sins. 



100 Our Own Church. 



If our readers stumble at these great and mys- 
terious truths let them move cautiously before 
they foster doubt. With the great law of sacri- 
fice and substitution we are familiar in life. 
Every day we see voluntary suffering for the 
sake of others. Every day we see the innocent 
suffer for the guilty ; and the highest joy of the 
human soul is when, through self-abnegation, it 
dares to put itself in the place of another, and 
bear burdens and suffer grief that through it 
others may have strength and gladness. Christ 
came to fight the powers of evil, to make salva- 
tion possible, to open the gate of heaven to be- 
lievers; and there were mysteries which no 
human or angelic mind can fathom, associated 
with the scene of Gethsemane and the long 
hours of darkness and agony on Calvary. He 
went down into deep gulfs of woe that we might 
have pathways prepared for our feet from earth 
to heaven. He suffered that we might be saved. 
And it behooves us to learn this lesson of self- 
sacrifice ourselves, that what the Christ did for 
us we may do for our fellow-men. 

Naturally we shrink from suffering. "We 



The Holy Communion. 101 



want what we call " good times," " happy days," 
no trouble, much pleasure. And yet do we not 
know that in these days of good fortune and suc- 
cess no real peace is found ? Joy comes in the 
way of sorrow. Some of the happiest people in 
this world are the people who are deprived of 
what we call u worldly comforts." The writer 
of these lines once wrote a little story about a 
boy whom he called Hartwell Harrington. Now 
Hartwell has had every thing that the world can 
give, and yet there come to him seasons of deep 
and bitter depression. What Hartwell needs is 
the spirit of the self-sacrificing Christ. What 
he needs is to know by a personal experience the 
joy of loving self-surrender. A correspondent, 
who has evidently tasted all the meaning of this 
truth, w T rote the author : " I am truly sorry for 
Hartwell Harrington. ... If he has 'every ad- 
vantage of an earthly sort, 5 love, friendship, be- 
longs to the Church, and is a Christian, and the 
religious truths which he usually accepts cannot 
drive away these times of depression and dis- 
couragement, it may be that he would gain help 
and strength were he to visit homes where are 



102 



Our Own Church. 



anxious business cares over against the 'sure 
success;' shattered health instead of his chief 
temporal blessings ; anxieties for future necessi- 
ties instead of an abundance ; children battling 
with the vicissitudes of life ; no ability to take 
one step in the future without the c unfailing ' 
hand ; where there are days when £ cares like a 
wild deluge ' press from within and from without, 
and yet when the sun always shines. Hartwell 
would find in such homes no remembrance of 
dark days, but he would find a tear-stained spot 
with 'shut door' where 'He is faithful that 
promised.' I wish that he might be comforted, 
and remember that £ a child of God praying to 
the Father is mightier than a warrior in armor 
of steel.' " 

This unknown correspondent reveals the deep- 
est root-principle of Christian character — a per- 
fect trust in a Father's care. This conscious- 
ness is reached through the ministry of the 
Spirit, by the sacrifice of Christ. One living 
for others, and having sorrow and yet always 
rejoicing, knows something even in this life of 
the mystery which is involved in the great sac- 



The Holy Communion. 103 



rifice which we commemorate at the table of 
the Lord. 

Dear young reader, understand the Holy Sac- 
rament. Prize it. Never omit it. Prepare for 
its intelligent observance. And as you draw 
near to the altar come with confession, with 
prayer, with faith, with covenant purpose ; re- 
gardless of mere feeling, give yourself anew to 
the service of Christ and of his Church. 



104 Our Own Chcjech. 



TRUE CHURCH LOYALTY. 

" Whatsoever things . . . are just." 

MR. A is a Methodist. He belongs to 
the Methodist Episcopal Church ; that is, 
he did for years belong to that Church. He 
was, in a sense, born in the Church. He was 
baptized and trained in it. He joined " on 
probation." He and his family attended it 
regularly. They owned a pew or had a place in 
church which they called their own. 

Mr. A moves West, He lands with his 

family in a little western town. He expects to 
make this place his home for many years, per- 
haps for the rest of his life. He does — to his 
credit be it recorded — look lip the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in the town. He attends its 
service on Sunday. His family go with him. 
It must be confessed that the church has a 
dingy look. The walls are somewhat stained 



Tkue Church Loyalty, 105 



with water from a leaky roof. They are bro- 
ken in some places, and well smoked up. The 
windows are stained, but not with artistic glass. 
And there are cobwebs in sight. The church 
ought not to have this forlorn appearance — but 
it does. 

The people are not a fashionable-appearing 
set. They are poor — the most of them. And 
the preaching is not brilliant. The pastor is 
a plain man. He might dress better — if his 
salary were larger. Indeed, on his limited sal- 
ary he might afford to comb his hair a little 
more carefully, and take the knots out of his 
unnecessary long beard. One would not be 
attracted toward him for any reason except that 
he seems to be an earnest man and occupies an 
important position. 

Mr. A is not pleased with church-build- 
ing, people, preacher, singing, or sermon. " It 
is not at all like the little church" he left in 
" Eastern New York." There are, all through 
the West, churches just as good, and people just 
as refined, and preachers just as gentlemanly as 
one will find in the East. But Mr. A hap- 



106 



Our Owk Church. 



pened to strike an unfortunate combination of 
conservatism and coarseness. 

The Sunday-school is like the church. Little 

Tom A didn't like the fellows in his class. 

Miss Jennie A was " disgusted with the 

girls" in her class, and John A declared he 

" would never go back to that school." And 
that Sunday evening the family canvasses the 
church and the school, the people and the 
preacher — and bad grows worse as they contrast 
this Sunday with last Sunday. They find more 
people whom they don't like, and recall more 
people in the old church whose faces they miss. 

The following week Mrs. A and Miss 

Jennie receive a call from two Presbyterian la- 
dies, or Congregational ladies, or Baptist ladies, 
perhaps. These ladies have heard, of course, 
that the A ? s are Methodists. Their min- 
ister told them so. And he also told them to 
call. "We may be able to get them into our 
Church," he said. The uncatholic and imperti- 
nent suggestion matures into a deliberate plan 
of proselyting. So the " ladies " call with a 
purpose. Conversation is opened with the usual 



True Church Loyalty. 107 



society questions and answers. Then come allu- 
sions to East and West, to our town, its growth, 
its schools, its churches ; and then the question 
blossoms out, " What church will you attend ? " 

" We've always been Methodists," answers 
Mrs. A . 

" O, Methodists ! Indeed ! " The feigned 
surprise is a fitting opening for the words that 
follow: "Well, Methodists are a very good sort 
of people, pious, you know, and all that ; but 
here in our town there is really no society 
among the Methodists. They are a poor class. 
All the best people go to our church ; and if 
you want to get your daughters into good soci- 
ety, you will have to come to us. Dr. , 

Judge , the 's, and the *s all go to 

our church, you know ; and Mr. , our min- 
ister, is an elegant man, refined, and good com- 
pany, and a lovely preacher." 

The "call" — a double call, of doubtful honor 
— tells on the susceptible and discontented wom- 
en. " Society" has wonderful power. Then 
the girls tease mother and mother teases father, 
and, after more calls and more ajjpeals and more 



108 Our Own Chcjrch. 

misrepresentations, backbones bend, and the 
Church letters go into the greedy grasp of a 
minister who calls himself a gentleman, and 
yet deliberately laid a plan to defraud the local 
Methodist Episcopal Church of a family to 
which it is entitled, and to fill a pew in his own 
church with people allured, not by the love of 
Christ, but beguiled through a carnal desire for 
social standing in the community. Thus " soci- 
ety" triumphs. The low standards of taste and 
of conscience, on the part of the proselyting 
pastor and his committee, have succeeded. A 
cowardly family drops the " cross," and, regard- 
less of doctrine, usages, antecedents, memory, 
goes into a " society church." 

The self-respect and religious tone of the 
whole family are, of necessity, lowered. Instead 
of giving, they receive; instead of leading, they 
are led ; and more than once they are laughed 
at by the very people who took them such easy 
captives. u They were glad enough to come to 
us," they say. " And why ? " they ask. 

There are some other things to be said on this 
subject. I do not excuse that little Methodist 



Tkue Chuech Loyalty. 109 



Episcopal Church. Indeed, there are some severe 
things that should be said to its members and pas- 
tor. In fact, it is a slovenly church. Its walls and 
windows and cobwebs are a disgrace to it. It 
needs a gospel of soap and shingles and glass and 
kalsomining. Its pastor ought to be ashamed of 
himself. He has a slovenly church because he 
is a sloven. I wish John Wesley or our " Church 
Extension Society " could take him in hand for 
an hour. No wonder he has such a church ! 
In this day we should have clean churches, con- 
structed and decorated according to a true art, 
ventilated perfectly, and warmed comfortably. 
No parlor should be more pleasant and inviting 
than the house of the Lord, whither we go on 
Sabbath-days to serve him and meet his saints. 

When a Methodist Episcopal church drops 
into the hands of boors, and is kept as barns are 
kept, it must not wonder if its tone repels peo- 
ple, and if even loyal Methodists of taste and 
refinement find in the case severe and unneces- 
sary temptations to unfaithfulness. 

Again : Why did not earnest Methodist Epis- 
copal women call early in the week on Mr. 



110 Ouk Own Chtjkchl 



A 's family, and show the best spirit that 

dwelt in the Church, and invite the co-operation 
it needed from the new comers? Why stand ofl 
and give rival congregations a chance to tempt 
our own people ? Why did not the pastor have 
his forces organized and at work ? That church 
needs a new preacher, and a new board of stew- 
ards, and leaders, and trustees. What a pity it 
could not have had a new member who might 
have helped it up ! 

But all this does not excuse Mr. A and 

\iis family. Concerning them something more 
remains to be said. We can afford to look into 

his antecedents. Mr. A is a good, solid man, 

and might be a very useful man. His father was 
much less of a man. He was well " down " so- 
cially, was poor, much despised by many people 
in the town in which he alternately worked and 
lounged. He was much pitied by others. He 
had no standing financially, socially, morally. 
One day, fifty years ago, a Methodist preacher 
dismounted, fastened his hbrse to a post, and 

entered the little house where A 's father 

lived. A — — was not himself born then. The 



Tkue Church Loyalty. Ill 

preacher spoke plain words to the man and his 
wife ; told them (what no pulpit or preacher 
had ever told them before) that God loves all 
men and that Christ died for all men and that 
all have a genuine offer of eternal life ; that 
through repentance and faith and good works 
a sinner may be blessed and be a blessing ; that 
through faith he receives and through good 
works he proves and uses God's grace ; that a 
guilty soul may have pardon for the past, peace 
and power and hope in the present, and in the 
ife to come fellowship with God. The preacher 
proved all this by the words of the Holy Bible 
which he held in his hand. He was so earnest, 

so faithful, so persistent that old A and his 

wife were impressed, and they kneeled down 
and prayed — the preacher leading. Then they 
sought diligently the promised "blessing," and 
in the little old kitchen and sitting-room and 

parlor (for in A 's house they were one and 

the same) there opened out a new life, a new 
love, a new joy The preacher often came to 

A 's. He preached there, organized a class, 

and started a little prayer-meeting for Thursday 



112 



Our Own Church. 



evenings. And what glad days those were in 

the little cottage ! A was a Christian, 

through and through, and every body acknowl- 
edged it. He drank no more. He gave up bad 
companions. He lived honestly, humbly, up- 
rightly, and was respected more and more by 
his neighbors, who would say to each other, 
" The Methodists did it." But for that Meth- 
odist preacher and the Church that sent him to 

old A 's house, young A would have 

been born into an atmosphere of tobacco and 
rum and family jars and social degradation. As 

it was, thanks to " the Methodists," A was 

born into a house of prayer and spiritual song 
and good- will, where " class" was held and ser- 
mons were preached. His family was poor, but 
it was respectable — and this respectability was 

owing to the Methodists. A grew up to 

manhood, held to virtue, industry, and economy 
by his father's and mother's life and example, 
and led, through a Methodist preacher's influ- 
ence, to seek a better education, and surrounded 
in his school days by Methodist friends, who 
stood by and encouraged him. His wife's 



True Church Loyalty. 113 



history is very much the same as his own. And 
when they got off the train to reside at the little 
western village, all the money and start and 
standing and taste and education they had they 
owed to Methodism — to a Methodist preacher, 
to a Methodist mother, to a Methodist father, to 
a Methodist school, to Methodist society. 

Now Mr. A , who has been made all that 

he is by the Church, has a chance to pay back a 
part of his gain, to lift up the Church, help it 
on, improve, beautify, strengthen it. 

"What did he do ? Alas for the power of 
" society " — and of the u world ! " 

Mr. A might have remained in his own 

communion ; given his money where it was 

needed ; put his taste into walls and windows ; 

put his knowledge and tact into Sunday-school 

and official board ; started a social center within 

his own Church which would have attracted and 

confirmed others and given his own Church a 

standing in the town. He would have had the 

satisfaction of being a leader rather than of being 

led. And every body w^ould have respected him 

more And he would have respected himself. 
8 



114 



Our Own Church. 



One thing is never to be overlooked or forgot- 
ten : there are many Methodist families who from 
different social beginnings are indebted to the 
Church, to a great degree, for moral and spirit- 
ual antecedents ; w T ho in homes of wealth were 
by Methodism saved from dissipation and deg- 
radation, and, perhaps, from poverty. Strength, 
fiber, harmony, and prosperity came through 
Methodism into elegant but exposed and world- 
ly homes, and because of it the family remained 
in affluence, the father's honor continued, and 
mother became the saint she was. All these owe 
a debt to their Church. And it is a debt which 
can be paid only by personal loyalty. 

Do I assert that a man cannot be as good a 
Christian in the Presbyterian or Baptist or Con- 
gregational Church as in a Methodist Episcopal 
Church ? I do not put it in that way. I love 
and honor these branches of the Holy Catholic 
Church. I know and love many of their devout 
ministers and members. But I do assert that 
when a man leaves one Church and joins another 
for "society" reasons, and to shirk the "shame" 
and service of his own, leaves the Church which 



Ttcue Church Loyalty. 115 

his father and mother loved, whose doctrines 
he cannot deny, and to whose ministry he is 
indebted for all the Gospel training he has — I 
say that this man commits a great wrong, sets a 
bad example, and sows the seeds of moral weak- 
ness in his household. 

Methodism has a right to the service of her 
own people whom she has blessed, and whose 
family sources owe all their best things to her 
influence. She has a right to ask their influ- 
ence, their personal membership, their moral 
and financial support ; and if our people had 
more conscience in this respect we should be 
able to build better churches, train abler preach- 
ers, develop a more influential and refined Chris- 
tian society, do more good to the world at large, 
and set an example to our sister communions of 
the glorious Holy Catholic Church. 

Let us be " just " in matters denominational, 
and be true to Methodism — the dear old fos- 
tering mother — who best represents to-day the 
beautiful, apostolic, holy, and divine doctrine 
and polity of the Church of Jesus Christ. 



116 Our Own Church. 



1^1. 

THE STORY OF MARK. 

" Forever thine." 

MARK was a young country boy who had 
worked on a farm from the day he was 
able to begin work up to the day that he left 
his old house for " Oxonian Hall/' where he 
was recorded by the registrar as " Eighteen years 
old ; a farmer by profession ; father dead ; moth- 
er living ; a member of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church ; at school six winter terms in Lincoln 

Township, County, State." There were 

a few tears on the broad red face of the boy as 
he said " Good-bye" to his plain, faithful, affec- 
tionate old mother, who put her arms around his 
neck and gave him three kisses, tender and en- 
ergetic kisses, breaking on his lips in the music of 
a mother's love. There is no music in the world 
like it. She said, " Be true, Mark, to your father's 
memory and to your old mother." And he said, 
" I will." There was a slight blush on the big 
boy's face as he stood before the registrar and 



The Story of Mark, 117 



answered the questions tliat were put to him. 
His answers are recorded above. This is the 
story of Mark's "matriculation" at Oxonian Hall. 

Mark had not enjoyed many educational ad- 
vantages, but he had made the best use of those 
that came in his way. He had a good mother, 
and that is a great step toward the highest and 
broadest culture. He had access to a few 7 good 
books w r hich made up the little library he had 
inherited from his father. He listened as his 
mother read them aloud when he was a little 
boy. He read them over again for himself 
when he grew larger. He consulted them often, 
especially for the "debates" they used to hold 
in the winter schools he attended, and for help 
in the "compositions" he had to write. His 
mother was a great reader ; took one good weekly 
secular and one weekly religious paper, and read 
every word of both. And she talked about all 
the subjects on which she read. She talked 
well. Her voice was good, her enunciation dis- 
tinct, her style accurate, her face bright, and she 
loved the boy for whom she read and talked. 
Winter school did a good deal for Mark, but 



118 



Our Own Church. 



mother-school all the year round did vastly more. 
Mothers are worth more than school-masters. 
And school-masters are worth ten times more to 
a boy with a good mother than they can be to 
the other scholars. And this is the story ol 
Mark's preparation for matriculation at Oxonian 
Hall. 

In an institution so full of the atmosphere of 
true culture, with men and women of learning, 
of taste, of tact, and of religious influence, as 
were his teachers, Mark soon became an enthu- 
siast in study, and pushed forward with a degree 
of application and success which afforded his 
professors great satisfaction. They saw the 
making of a strong man in the rustic, whose ap- 
pearance had not won him an immediate social 
recognition, but whose power, slowly developing, 
had made him stanch friends both among his 
class-mates and in the faculty. In no sphere of 
life do earthly ambitions find earlier or fuller 
play than in the scholastic. The brighter, the 
quicker, the more versatile and successful the 
young student, the higher do his hopes and re- 
solves ascend. Visions of achievement and of 



The Story of Mark. 119 



renown flash across his heavens. He is full of 
confidence. Recitations, discussions, composi- 
tions quicken his desire and strengthen his pur- 
pose. And here creeps in the demon of Selfish- 
ness, in the form of vaulting Ambition, the 
influence of which is as deadening to all the 
finer instincts and aspirations of the soul as is 
Covetousness itself. Mark was not exempt from 
the temptations which every youth must en- 
counter. He had some fierce conflicts, some 
deadly doubts, some unworthy feelings of jeal- 
ousy as he measured the power of his class-rivals, 
and some ambitious schemes which dazzled his 
imagination and weakened his spiritual life. 
He did not drink beer or wine. He did not 
smoke. He visited neither theater nor billiard- 
hall. Mark was a circumspect, honorable fellow, 
as boys are weighed in these times by public 
opinion. But angels saw the struggle going on 
within him, and he himself knew how selfish, 
worldly, and unchristian were his most interior 
thoughts and motives. Success therefore gave 
him little pleasure. It seemed to him as thougli 
a promising field of grain was spread out in 



120 Our Own Church. 



fresh verdure under the sun on the slope of the 
mountain. But he who knew best, and as casual 
observers could not know, knew that the heat 
and fissures and rumblings under ground and the 
occasional puffs of smoke among the young 
grain were sure signs of a force underneath 
which was hostile to the coming harvest, and 
that any hour it might burst forth to wither and 
bury every blade of wheat that grew in the field. 
Mark knew that with such a heart the culture 
of his head would not be of much worth. 

It was evening. The students were gathered 
in the chapel of Oxonian Hall for prayer. They 
were detained a little later than usual that even- 
ing. There was a deep religious feeling in the 
institution. The claims of God on the love and 
service of the students were keenly felt. It 
came like a warm wave over the school. There 
are such warmings up of the physical atmosphere 
when Nature seems to take a leap into life. 
You can almost see the leaves and blossoms 
come out. There are such sweeping currents 
in the spiritual world. They come with sum- 
mer warmth out of the heavens. I pity a sem- 



The Story of Mark. 



121 



inary or college where they are not felt and en- 
couraged and used. Such a stirring up and 
warming up and blossoming out had come to 
Oxonian Hall. After the students and faculty 
had left the chapel, and the last notes of the 
organ had died away, Mark, so absorbed in 
thought as to forget to leave, found himself 
alone in the dim twilight. How silent the place ! 
How solemn the hour ! All that passed through 
his soul then w r e cannot record here. But I 
know that bowing down alone in the darkness 
he whispered a deep, strong, soul-surrendering 
prayer. The whispers now and then broke into 
groans. The conflict was fearful, the surrender 
was full, the victory was perfect, the peace that 
came into the young student's soul seemed 
to him like a miracle. " I w T ill live for thee, O 
Christ," he cried. "I will live for the world 
thou earnest to redeem. Away, Ambition ! 
Away, selfishness, and envy, and all evil desires ! 
I do here and now, in the name of Christ, sur- 
render myself to thee, O Father of heaven and 
earth ! I enter into an everlasting covenant with 
thee, and with all true souls, to love and serve 



122 Oujr Own Church. 



thee and to prove my love for thee by serving 
my fellow-man ! " Mark rose from his knees. 
The silence was profound, and the sense of the 
divine presence was overwhelming. Through 
one of the open windows of the chapel he caught 
sight of the new moon. The familiar crescent 
with its silver light had new beauty to his eyes 
that night. Nature receives an added charm 
when souls who study it are brought into har- 
mony with the God of nature. A new life had 
been given to Mark and a new career opened 
before him. The young and growing moon had 
a meaning. That night he wrote to his mother. 

After this wonderful experience Mark moved 
steadily forward. He had work to do. He did 
it faithfully and well. He had seasons of storm 
and doubt and darkness. He repeated his vow 
of surrender, remembered the Christ of his sal- 
vation, read the word of God regularly, asso- 
ciated with those who had committed themselves 
to the same service. Thus he passed safely 
through every season of depression. " I built 
that night on God, not on frames and feelings," 
he said. The religious interest at Oxonian Hall 



The Story of Mark. 



123 



was followed by mucli discussion among the 
students concerning church membership. More 
than one student approached Mark to secure his 
name as a candidate for enrollment in this church 
or that. Mark was decided, and gave prompt 
answer : " My father and mother brought me 
up in the Methodist Episcopal Church." A 
Roman Catholic friend wrote him about that 
Church. A class-mate who belonged to the 
Protestant Episcopal Church used strong argu- 
ments, as he supposed, why Mark should join 
that denomination. Other u branches " stretched 
their boughs over into Mark's neighborhood, 
but he invariably said, " I was born into a Meth- 
odist Episcopal family. I believe in my own 
Church. When I have examined farther and 
fully, and find that I cannot conscientiously 
stay there, I will seek another fold. But now I 
stay with my own." So Mark stayed and ex- 
amined. He reviewed church history, studied 
church polity, read religious biography, gave 
answers to his Roman Catholic and Protestant 
Episcopal friends — answers I am sorry not to 
have space here to record — and every day grew 



124 



Our Own Church. 



broader as a Christian and more positive and 
earnest as a Methodist. He wrote to his mother, 
" I love all branches of the Christian Church as 
they try to set forth Jesus Christ himself, his 
doctrines, his ethics, his Spirit. The demand of 
the age is the simple teachings and life of Christ 
reproduced every day in our several spheres of 
life and influence. This philosophy makes me a 
Methodist. Our Church seems to me most like 
the early Church. I read the book of the Acts 
of the Apostles, and the epistles, and feel more at 
home in the Church I have chosen.'" And thus 
Mark stood up for his own Church with intelli- 
gent fidelity. His manliness and decision gave 
much strength to the other students. He said one 
evening in a " converts' class," as it was called, 
"¥e should not separate culture from religious 
life, education from grace. We should be Chris- 
tian students. We should bring our intellectual 
energies into the service of the Church. Let 
us form a ' League ' devoted to the sanctification 
of our educational opportunities, in the study of 
the Holy Scriptures, the study of church history 
and economics, and the promotion of a large, 



The Story of Mark. 



125 



full-orbed, spiritual, philanthropic, and church 
life." 

The proposal was accepted by the students, 
" The Oxford League of Oxonian Hall " organ- 
ized, and from that day onward the Methodist 
Episcopal Church gained in interest and influ- 
ence in that institution. I cannot here report 
all the discussions and essays, the committees 
and their work, the ante-communion services, 
the " conference debates," the rich biographical 
resumes from Methodist history, the able argu- 
ments on " the extemporaneous instead of the 
liturgical form of worship," the "itinerancy," 
the " class-meeting," and a score of denomina- 
tional topics, w T hich occupied one evening a week 
in the chapel of Oxonian Hall. A young Meth- 
odist girl from city said to a friend, " I 

was never so proud of my ow r n Church as since 
I have learned more of her history, opinions, 
and achievements." A young Congregation- 
alist said, " If you Methodist people would let 
every body know what you do believe, and let 
your young folks know, and what God has done 
for you and what a work is yet to be done by 



126 



Our Own Church. 



you, your power would be immensely aug- 
mented." Mark, who was leader of the League, 
said, " If we will only study God's word and 
give ourselves to culture for God's glory and 
for man's good we need not care what any body 
thinks of us. As for myself," he said, " I have 
scientific tastes. I shall be a chemist. I shall 
try to be a good one. And I shall find satisfac- 
tion in connecting my work and my good name, 
if I can win it, and my success with the Church 
I belong to and love. As Bishop Simpson once 
said, ' I live to make my own Church a power 
in the land, while I live to love every church 
that loves and exalts Christ.' " So much for 
Mark and the league. On another page I give 
the outline of Mark's address at the formal or- 
ganization of the " Oxford League of Oxonian 
Hall." Will not Methodist Episcopal students 
in our several institutions organize similar 
leagues ? 



"THE OXFORD LEAGUE OF OXONIAN HALL." 



The voluntary on the organ having ended, a hymn was sung by the 
congregation that packed the chapel. It was the strong, rich, spiritual 
hymn beginning, lk Arise, my soul, arise." Prayer was offered by the 

President of Oxonian Hall, who then introduced Mr. Mark as 

tk Leader of the Oxford League of Oxonian Hall." Mark was received 
with cheers, and proceeded to deliver an address of which the following 
is merely an outline : 

1. Love for all Christian believers in all branches of the Church of 
Christ should be by each believer genuine and abounding. 

2. Love, to be true, must never be disloyal to truth, nor must it, for 
fear of giving offense, fail to testify against error. 

3. We most effectually testify against error by boldly and faithfully 
proclaiming the whole truth. We should not aim to build up our own 
school of religious thought by tearing others down. 

4. The Methodist Episcopal Church, with which all members of the 
Oxford League are connected, has all the marks of the original and 
apostolic Church. 

5. Methodism, therefore, really began in the days of Christ and of 
the apostles. 

6. Methodism is not, however, the only representative of apostolic 
Christianity. She claims to be one of the many branches of the true 
Holy Catholic Church. 

7. The revival of Methodism in the last century was a blessing to all 
branches of the Church. 

8. The Methodism of the last century began in Oxford University, 
and among men of the highest culture. 

9. True Methodism has always favored intellectual training. 

10. The great demand of this age is a more thorough culture in sub- 
ordination to a tender, sympathetic, philanthropic, and vigorous piety 
accompanied by a present personal consciousness of harmony with 
God. 

11. Young Methodist Episcopal students in our Church institutions 
should seek Christly character and the highest human culture, aiming 
at high scholarship in the various departments of learning and using 
it in the service and to the honor of our own Church, as laymen, as 
teachers, and as ministers of the Gospel. 

12. These ends will be subserved by the organization of an Oxford 
League, which aims to secure Christian experience, Bible knowledge, 
sound general education and habits of practical philanthropy. It aims 
also to promote a higher appreciation of the divine origin, history, 
organization, usages, advantages, and most pressing necessities of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. 



128 



Oue Own Church. 



•XT. 
HARRY. 

"Ashamed of Jesus?" 

HARRY was a fine-looking fellow ; a well- 
dressed and handsome fellow, evidently 
refined in his tastes, and certainly agreeable in 

^nanners : a graduate of II University, and 

now a teacher. It was easy to drop into a con- 
versation with him. He was attractive and, 
after the last word, left a pleasant impression. 
Such agreeable acquaintance a Pullman parlor 
car occasionally affords. 

Harry talked freely. He had his tastes and 
opinions ; knew much about the leading col- 
leges of the day and their peculiar views and 
policies ; was not a believer in the elective 
scheme, nor yet fully satisfied with the rigorous 
and old-time classic regime. He was "not a 
Methodist." He was partly Congregational and 
partly " Episcopal liked one more than the 



Harry. 



other, and went to either or both according to 
circumstances. lie was "not a Methodist." He 
said that twice. 

As our conversation continued Harry be- 
trayed a singular familiarity for a young college 
man, and a Congregationalist or "Episcopalian," 
with Methodist Episcopal names and ways. He 
knew the editors and the church papers. He 
spoke of class-meetings and Conferences. He saw 
the name of "Cranston & Stowe" on a paper we 
held, and remarked, 

"That used to be 6 Hitchcock & Walden,' 
didn't it ? " 

We saw that he was at home in the nomen- 
clature of Methodism, and asked, 

"Were you not brought up in a Methodist 
Episcopal family ? 55 

Pie answered: "Yes; all my life, until re- 
cently. I am not now a Methodist. Our whole 
family was Methodist until a very short time 
ago. But we left." 

We found out why. For all action there is a 
reason. Harry left Methodism because his father 
did. His father and family left on the occasion 



1-30 



Our Own Chuech. 



of a church trouble. We inferred that the 
" trouble" was the occasion, and not the cause, 
of the leaving. It was a good time to go. They 
went. We probed Hariy still further and found 
that he was quite willing to go — glad to go. 
We tried to find out why he was glad. We suc- 
ceeded. Harry "didn't like prayer-meetings and 
revivals." He "didn't like responses in meeting" 
— unless they were printed in a book. He didn't 
like "working on the emotions." Besides, there 
were a "good many common people in the 
Church," and "common people are not agreea- 
ble, you know." Then Harry smiled a pleasant 
smile, and twisted his light — light-weight, light- 
shade — mustache and looked out of the car 
window like "a high-born fellow, you know." 

We did not give Harry up, for he was a most 
agreeable talker, and seemed to be in earnest, 
and was willing to discuss matters. We gave 
him our views about revivals. We conceded 
the occurrence now and then of uncomfortable 
episodes in religious meetings, where liberty of 
speech and entire extemporaneousness in prayer 
are allowed ; where weak people and impulsive 



Harey. 



131 



people and hysterical people have a right to 
express themselves ; where personal joy over 
personal salvation finds a tongue and is permit- 
ted to tell about the lifting of burdens, and the 
scattering of clouds, and the healing of wounds, 
and the banishing of despair, and the triumph 
of hope, and where this expression does some- 
times shatter the college boy's rules of grammar 
and the society man's canons of taste. Would 
Harry forbid this freedom? "Would he stop 
the mouth of a reformed drunkard, or the glad 
utterances of the reformed drunkard's wife, or 
a song of victory over the assurance of divine 
acceptance? Allowing the experience to be 
real, would he forbid the expression ? " Cer- 
tainly not," but then he " liked silence." In the 
cemetery of his native town Harry could find — 
silence. But then he could also find it, and for 
the same reason, in some churches. 

The aesthetic element in Harry w T as very 
strongly developed. It usually, is in young 
people of a certain kind and degree of culture. 
If they are society people this development is 
more marked and its influence very great. They 



132 Our Own Church. 

don't like any thing that is "out of taste," or 
that certain frigid and worldly people pro- 
nounce to be "out of taste." It offends them. 
They are ashamed to have any thing occur in 
any of their meetings that savors of emotion, or 
that violates laws of accurate speech, or that 
"nice people" would laugh at. 

Such aesthetic youths would have a hard time 
in war. It would be "dreadful" to have to stay 
away from all the modern conveniences and to 
be compelled to live in such rough ways. How 
"awful" hospital ministries would be! What 
vulgar things have to be done there ! Kitchen- 
work is so much "out of taste," and helping 
mother care for baby, and going to the groce^, 
and watching by old auntie dying with cancer ! 
What perfectly terrible violations of taste in the 
days of Christ, when blind men called out to 
him, and mothers crowded forward with their 
children for a blessing, and lepers praised him, 
and children shouted " Hosanna ! " and people 
spread garments and palm-branches in the way. 
And he — the Christ — approved it all. 

We tried to show Harry that "taste" is a very 



Harry. 



133 



selfish and a very dangerous thing when carried 
too far, and that it is easy to carry it too far : 
that reality, sturdy reality, sometimes allows and 
requires things which weak "propriety" con- 
demns ; that true work for men, bold, rugged, 
manly, merciful, divine work for men, must 
care very little for conventionalities ; that men 
who save souls, like men who save nations, must 
break loose from such pettiness and do manful 
work in heroic way. We told him that Meth- 
odist ministers, as a class, whatever may be said 
about largeness or lack of "'culture," were pre- 
eminently men of profound earnestness and 
plain, bold speech and sound common sense, and 
that they were, through their very vigor and 
loyalty to reality, in danger of depreciating the 
little conceits and temporary decrees of sestheti- 
"cism. As for these men, they could not stay in 
a cemetery. If they did stones would speak, 
graves open, and the dead come forth. We 
made Harry ashamed of his "taste" and "Lubin" 
and dilettanteism, as he began to think of the 
heroic faith and good sense and unflinching pur- 
pose to do good and bring souls into the eter- 



134 



Our Owk Church. 



nal heaven which characterize the Church and 
ministry he and his family had forsaken. 

The "emotion" troubled Harry. Well, hyster- 
ical emotion and manufactured emotion and un- 
controlled emotion sometimes trouble us. But 
there is a true emotion. Liberty cannot be 
given to the true without making way for the 
display of the false. And it is better to have a 
little wild-fire than to smother the real fire. 
Where would Harry find life without emotion : 
Among his college class-mates ? On the base- 
ball ground? At the boat-race? At a cane 
rush ? On the campus when the songs began ? 
At the class supper? Where would he find 
freedom from emotion ? Among school-boys ? 
In the court-room? In a nursery? At the 
theater? Among tourists in Switzerland? At 
a political meeting? In Congress? Where? 
There is one place — among the permanent resi- 
dents of a cemetery. But Harry wants emotion 
repressed in only one place — a church meeting, 
where, if anywhere on earth, emotion is fitting 
and necessary ; where those themes are discussed 
which are more likely than any other to awaken 



Harry. 



135 



the noblest and most effective emotions of the 
soul ; where there cannot be thought or convic- 
tion without emotion ; where to be alive is to be 
subject to the play of emotion. Harry wants 
the Church to be a cemetery with tombs and 
tablets and columns and art and — silence ! Ah ! 
Harry, you don't know what the Church is for, 
nor what it holds in its heart, nor how it came 
to be, nor who reigns over it. If you want 
silence, broken only by conventional or liturgic 
provision, don't go back to Pentecost. Don't 
try to bring back the day of the Master's tri- 
umphal entry into Jerusalem. Don't go to 
Methodist meetings. Don't pass the gates of 
the celestial city, where 

"rush of hallelujahs 
Fills all the earth and sky ! " 

and where 

" 'Hallelujah 7 " they cry, 

To the King of the sky, 
To the great everlasting I AM; 

To the Lamb that was slain, 

And that liveth again, — 
1 Hallelujah to God and the Lamb ! " 

As for the objection based upon the presence 



186 Our Own Church. 



of "the common people," Harry did not press it 
very strongly after we had shown our colors on 
the aesthetic question. He saw it could not 
weigh with us. We believe in common sense 
and rnggedness of soul and thorough work, and 
in the democratic ideas of Christianity. Harry 
was afraid we might quote texts out of the 
Gospel concerning Jesus Christ— such as, "The 
common people heard him gladly," and "He ate 
with publicans and sinners." Perhaps Harry 
remembered the commission given by the Mas- 
ter, "Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature." Or he may have 
recalled the fact that the disciples at the begin- 
ning were "common people," and that the ma- 
jority of the earliest believers were very "com- 
mon people." Or, it may be, Harry feared that 
we might reach back by a simple question into 
his own ancestry. And we might reach back 
too far ; or, not reaching very far, might find a 
fact or two of an exceedingly plain sort, and 
break a high, stiff Cambridge collar of the pres- 
ent by a rude grip on a collarless shirt-band of 
the past. Perhaps Harry talked about "com- 



Haeey, 



137 



mon people" with liis peculiar tone when he 
was some distance from home, or to people who 
did not know him and his at home — the home 
of the family to-day or a quarter of a century 
back. However that may be, Harry did not 
push the plebeian question any further. With 
his good sense — and he has a good stratum of it 
under the deposit of taste and social ambition — 
Harry cannot argue against a church because it 
has "common people" in it. That argument 
would have kept many a senator out of the 
Capitol, many a judge out of the Supreme 
Court, many a President out of the "White 
House, many a millionaire out of his parlor, 
many a lady out of society, and many a saint 
out of heaven. But for the "common people" 
we should have neither wealth nor scholarship. 
The man who depreciates them is chargeable 
with folly, and the Church that neglects them is 
guilty of a great crime — a crime against God 
and against the Saviour who died for all men, 
every-where. 



133 Our Own Church. 



ETHEL. 

{ * Good sense is sister to good taste." 

ETHEL SETTIQUE had French blood in her 
veins, and a strong taste for the things which 
were pronounced "in good taste." Very often 
when there was no stronger argument in favor 
of a thing than that it was in "good taste" she 
at least for a time approved it, even when her 
native good sense opposed it. She had both 
very strong, sense and a very high degree of 
aesthetic sensitiveness. All who know any thing 
about the combination in one individuality well 
know that it precipitates many an interior con- 
troversy, in which one person is broken into 
two ; that the two are sure to fight for a long 
time over the problem which has been submit- 
ted to the Unity, and that the problem cannot 
be adjusted until there has been a prolonged 
scuffle between what we may be allowed to call 
the Duality. Now Ethel Settique was a Unity 
in Duality or a Duality in Unity. 



Ethel. 



139 



If she was French she was neither flippant 
nor fickle. "VVe know the reputation that people 
give the nation, and we think it unfair. But 
there is little use in fighting against these uni- 
versal reputations. In Ethel's case we are care- 
ful to put in a modifying statement, seeing that 
there was a trace of French blood in the swift, 
full streams that swept through her veins. And 
she was a Methodist. She always said she was 
a "Methodist Episcopalian." And she put em- 
phasis on the "Episcopalian," although, to tell 
the truth, she was at the last remove from the 
traditional Episcopalian. She saj^s frankly that 
she is a "Methodist Episcopalian," with double- 
underscore-for-caps (the compositor at least will 
understand us), because she is not any other 
kind of Episcopalian. She believes in the 
Episcopal form of government. She believes 
in two "orders" only (and that will certainly 
delight Dr. Neely), and in the Episcopacy as an 
"office," and as an office full of dignity and 
honor. She likes to point to her "Bishop" and 
show what power he has — a power that he does 
not get from an "order," or from antiquity, but 



140 Our Own Church. 



from the Church that is, and from the work 
that he does, and from the manhood under the 
Bishop, and from the Lord himself, who, as she 
believes, directs in the selection of Bishops. 
She is a great enthusiast on the Episcopacy — is 
Ethel Settique. 

She has a young friend who is as much of a 
Protestant Episcopalian as Ethel is an Episcopa- 
lian of the — right sort. And they discuss mat- 
ters, generally with great good nature. When 
they do get w^armed up and talk like — preachers, 
which, seeing that they are only lay members of 
the Church, they ought not to do, they soon get 
reconciled and kiss each other and "make up," 
and — begin again. They discuss "orders" and 
"succession" and "taste" and, which is more 
important, the "preaching" or the "praying," 
and all those subjects that will come up when a 
new-fashioned Protestant Episcopalian and an 
old-fashioned Methodist Episcopalian get to- 
gether. And of course "the liturgy" comes up, 
and the distinction between "reading prayers" 
and "praying." We are sorry not to be able to 
put down in black and white all that they did 



Ethel, 



141 



say one afternoon when they had a "peaceful 
quarrel," as Ethel called it, over the " liturgy." 
They really had all the old arguments, pro and 
con. It was a lively discussion. It was begun 
by Ethel's friend, who indorsed the views of 

Dr. , editor of the , on the liturgy. 

She got the reading of the — — through her 
intelligent Protestant Episcopal rector, who 
took it regularly "because it is so strong and 
bright and frank." The editor in the editorial 
referred to says: "The Discipline contemplates 
a participation of the communicants with the 
minister in the repetition of the Confession. It 
should always be done. Here no objection to a 
liturgy can be alleged. The effect is solemn 
and impressive to a high degree. The writer 
tried the method of reading it for several years, 
the people being silent ; then requested them to 
join in the Confession, and the latter was every 
way to be preferred." "So you see," said 
Ethel's friend, "that your people are gradually 
coming around to a liturgy." It was at that 
particular moment we should like to have had 
Ethel's face painted by a real artist. 



142 



Our Own Church. 



" Coming around to a liturgy indeed ! " and 
there were some lines of noble irony drawn in 
the child's fine face. "Coming around to a 
liturgy ! We have always had a liturgy. We 
began with it very much as you Protestant 
Episcopalians have it now, and soon grew out of 
its bondage. We use it on occasions. We ac- 
cept it as exceptional. We believe in the idea 
of a form, but we believe more in freedom. 
There is a certain educating value in classic 
prayers, but they may shut the soul against the 
free play of spiritual influence by their very 
beauty, and they may foster a critical habit to 
such a degree as to reuder one insensible to the 
sweetness and power of a spontaneous prayer, 
because its expression is not according to classic 
standards. No, no, I know too much about the 
dwarfing and binding power of 'taste' to justify 
the use of an invariable form." Ethel grew 
eloquent in her defense of the extemporaneous 
order of her beloved Church. "But," said her 
friend, "your Church is growing more and more 
fond of forms of prayer." Ethel replied : "The 
opposite is true. In England, where in some 



Ethel. 143 



Wesleyan chapels the old liturgy according to 
Mr. Wesley's custom is still used, the people on 
the whole dislike it, and many absent themselves 
from the chapel until just before the sermon, in 
order to avoid the liturgy. Methodists can 
never be liturgists. There is not a minister in 
the Church in America, as far as I know, who 
advocates the use of a form of prayer except 
on special occasions." "You do read Scripture 
in concert," said her friend. Ethel replied, 
"To some extent. The participative service in 
which Scripture is read responsively is in many 
places used in public service and Sunday-school, 
but nowhere to the exclusion or reduction of 
the extemporaneous prayer. I believe our min- 
isters and superintendents would to a man give 
up even that if they saw any tendency to a set 
liturgy. It is not in the genius of Methodism 
to be liturgical, much less ritualistic. The edi- 
tor's concession which you quoted is not in 
favor of the liturgy, for I happen to know that 
the editor is a loyal Methodist Episcopalian, and 
does not believe in the use of a liturgy beyond 
the present provisions of the Discipline. By 



144 Our Own Church. 



that he stands. And so do I." And Ethel 
smiled to think what she had almost compared 
herself to by classing herself with so great a 
man as Dr. - — But with all her " taste," and 
love of order, and desire to increase an interest 
on the part of young people and children in the 
church service, she is heartily opposed to set 
forms, liturgical tendencies, aud quartette choirs. 
She wants the people to feel at home in all 
Methodist Episcopal churches, to sing heartily, 
to pray spontaneously, to read God's word aloud 
if they want to, and even in using the Lord's 
Prayer to speak it out each for himself without 
trying to keep with the minister or with the 
other people, knowing that when a great con- 
gregation is thoroughly interested its individuals 
will by an irresistible law of sympathy keep 
together, and that without thinking about it. 
Of course we do have Sunday-school concert 
services, and employ Christmas-trees and flowers 
and banners, which in a regular church service 
we might condemn, just as a lecturer would tell 
funny stories in an off-hand platform speech 
which he would never think of introducing into 



Ethel. 



145 



the sermon.- "I believe," said Ethel, "that if 
our people saw the slightest tendency toward 
formalism and ritualism in these things they 
would give them all up, even the observance of 
Christmas-day." Ethel is right. What Meth- 
odism needs is spontaneity governed by common 
sense, and by the ordinary measure of good taste 
which common sense always has, and which it 
always keeps in wise subjection. So thinks our 
little French friend, Ethel Settique. And the 
writer of these lines fully agrees with her. 
10 



146 



Our Own Church. 



THE STORY OF A REVIVAL. 

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." 

HEEE #ere to be " special meetings " in the 



JL Methodist Episcopal Church of . 

One might be tempted to think that the regular 
meetings of that church were enough to take up 
the time and excite the interest of the people in 
the congregation and community without insti- 
tuting a series of " special" meetings. The 
church had two " classes" meeting at 9 o'clock 
every Sunday morning; preaching at 10:30 
A. M. ; Sunday-school at 2:30 P. M. ; young peo- 
ple's prayer-meeting at 6:30, and preaching again 
at 7:30 P. M. On Monday night there was an 
" official meeting ; " Tuesday night, three " class- 
meetings ; " Wednesday night, general prayer- 
meeting ; Thursday night, two " class-meetings ;" 
Friday night, two cottage prayer-meetings and 
young people's prayer-meeting ; and on Saturday 
night choir practice. One may be excused for 
thinking that the " regular meetings are 




The Stoky of a Kevival. 



147 



enough." So thought arid so said -Herbert S. 
Topatome, a young fellow of good family in the 

Methodist Episcopal Church of , in the 

District of the Annual Conference. 

Herbert heard the minister announce the 
"special" meetings one pleasant Sunday morn- 
ing in May, and, being of a mathematical turn of 
mind, Herbert at the dinner-table counted the 
services of the week in their church. The re- 
sult was as follows, beginning with the two 
classes on Sunday morning and closing with the 
choir-meeting on Saturday evening : Two, plus 
one, plus one, plus one, plus one, equal six ser- 
vices for Sabbath. For the week-days one, plus 
three, plus one, plus two, plus three-, plus one, 
equal eleven. Six Sunday, plus eleven week- 
day services, equal seventeen church services a 
week. Multiply seventeen by fifty-two and the 
result is eight hundred and eighty-four religious 
services in a year. " What is the use," asked 
our young Methodist Episcopal mathematician, 
"of special meetings?" Father Topatome 
was pleased with his soirs wisdom, and smiled 
because he saw in it wit as well as wisdom, and 



148 



Our Own Church. 



added, " If in the seventy-five families of our 
church there were family prayer only once every 
dayit would make twenty-seven thousand and 
three hundred prayers a year, in addition to the 
regular eight hundred and eighty -four services of 
the church ; making a total of twenty-eight thou- 
sand one hundred and eighty-four 'regular' 
services in one year." Then he smiled a self- 
complacent smile at Herbert and said, " I don't 
see, my son, any use for special services." And 
both Herbert aud his father took a swallow of 
good, strong, after-dinner coffee and winked at 
each other. It is so witty to be wise ! 

Hattie, the oldest girl of the Topatome house- 
hold, only thirteen years of age, was as bright 
as Herbert, as good a mathematician, and a bet- 
ter Methodist. She listened in the morning 
with solemn attention to the sermon and with 
gratitude to the minister's announcement of the 
special services. At dinner she heard with a 
wounded heart the heartless and frivolous criti- 
cisms and calculations of Herbert and her father. 
She was silent for a few moments, and as the 
worldly-minded pair laughed at the "special 



The Stoey of a Revival. 149 

meetings," u and revivals," and " evangelists," 
she collected her thoughts, lifted her heart to 
Heaven for a breath of help, and then asked 
Herbert how many of the seventeen regular 
services he had attended that week. By her 
assistance Herbert counted — two. "And you, 
father ? " asked Hattie. After a bit of raillery 
and evasion he, by her aid and yielding to her 
pressure, said, " One — I was at church Sunday 
morning." " Father," continued the ardent and 
loyal girl, " if the seventy-five families of our 
church had family prayer just as often as we did 
last week, how many family prayer services 
were there out of the possible five hundred and 
twenty -five ? And if last week's family devo- 
tions in our house be the standard in our church 
for the year, how many family prayers would 
there be this year out of the estimated twenty- 
seven thousand three hundred ? " Now, last 
week there was no family prayer in the Topa- 
tome house. And although Mr. Topatome's 
father did have family prayer regularly, and al- 
though Topatome himself believed in it and did 
once in a while — more rarely than he knew — 



150 Ouk Own Church. 



have Sunday morning family worship, the whole 
company at the table, when crowded by Hattie 
to tell when they had kneeled in prayer at the 
family altar, were compelled to acknowledge 
that it had been weeks and months since the 
family Bible had been brought out and used in a 
devotional service of any kind. Herbert wanted 
to " talk about something else," and his father 
thought that " if the church would attend to its 
regular duties we should not need special ser- 
vices," and suggested that he "must take a 
Sunday afternoon nap." But Hattie was not to 
be silenced, and as she inherited no small meas- 
ure of her father's force she insisted upon say- 
ing her say. And this is substantially what she 
said : 

" The church has regular services. Herbert 
and you say that in one week there are seven- 
teen of them, or eight hundred and eighty-four 
a year. In the seventy-five homes of our church 
there may be twenty-seven thousand three hun- 
dred family prayers a year, making a grand 
total of twenty-eight thousand one hundred and 
eighty-four. That sounds large, and to say it, 



The Story of a Eevival. 151 

seems wise, and from the way Herbert smiles 
over it I think he considers it wondrous 
witty ; but I consider it both weak and wicked. 
Forgive me, father, but you tell me to be 6 a 
true and simple-hearted girl, 5 and dear old grand- 
father, who always had family prayer, told me 
before he died that ' piety was the best orna- 
ment a woman could wear, 5 and dear dead 
mother told me to 6 stand true to the Church 
and to the Lord Jesus, who is its Head and Life. 5 
Therefore you must hear me. Herbert, accord- 
ing to your own arithmetic, attends two and 
you one out of the possible seventeen services 
a week. And as to family prayer, you made a 
sad mistake in referring to it, for if other mem- 
bers are like the Topatomes there is next to no 
family prayer in the church. See where your 

arithmetic puts you : In the church 

twenty-eight thousand one hundred and eighty- 
four possible regular services a year. S. Topa- 
tome attends fifty-two of them. The difference 
between fifty-two and twenty-eight thousand 
one hundred and eighty-four is just twenty- 
eight thousand one hundred and thirty-two. 55 



152 



Our Own Church. 



Then Aunt Sarah, who is very amiable, and 
as wise as she is amiable, said, " We hold 
k special ' meetings to awaken the church to the 
value of the ' regular ' meetings, and to promote 
regular religious service in the church and the 
family. Until the 6 regular ' services are appre- 
ciated and observed the 6 special ' will be neces- 
sary. I think the mathematical arguments of 
the dinner-table are as twenty-eight thousand one 
hundred and eighty-four to fifty-two, or as five 
hundred and forty-one to one in favor of special 
meetings." And here the company broke up. 
But this was not the end. 



The special meetings in church began 

according to the pastor's announcement. An 
evangelist who had both taste and common 
sense to balance an earnest heart came to the 
pastor's assistance. There were special services 
held every day. A morning Bible reading and 
prayer-meeting, an afternoon meeting for chil- 
dren and youth, and an evening sermon, follow- 
ed by altar service or inquiry meeting. Fur six 



The Story of a Kevival. 



153 



weeks — well into the summer — this series con- 
tinued. Three meetings were not held every 
day, but there were for the six weeks many 
more meetings than usual. There was little ob- 
jectionable demonstration and no excessive ex- 
citement. Sixty persons, some old, some young, 
became " probationers ; " a large number of back- 
sliders were reclaimed, and the Church was 
quickened. Our interest centers not in the 
church, but in the home of Herbert and Hattie 
and their father. 

Herbert's scorn grew apace with the increase 
of popular interest in the meetings. When the 
general character of the services came under 
discussion in the stores, street-cars and parlors 
of the place, Herbert took sides in a most lordly 
manner against the " fanaticism of the evangel- 
ists," and reported at table in an irritating way 
what was said by Mr. Soandso and Mrs. Thisor- 
that, putting into their unfavorable remarks all 
the contempt that could find escape under the 
shadow of his callow mustache. At first he 
grieved and then almost enraged his sister, who 
had a very human heart and a high sense of 



U4 



Our Owx Church. 



justice, along with simplicity of faith and a true 
reverence for holy things. She held her peace, 
however, and allowed Herbert to talk and sneer 
and lay up fuel for flame of repentance later on. 
He said so much and recurred to the subject so 
frequently that his father one day remarked, " I 
shall expect to see you a ranting saint some day, 
my son. You fight like Saul of Tarsus." 

" What I hate is the excitement," remarked 
Herbert, one morning at breakfast. 

" What excitement ? " asked Hattie. 

" That revival excitement. I was in a while 
last evening. I think it outrageous to make 
such a row over religion." 

Hattie answered in her quiet way, " I was 
there last night, but discovered no excessive 
demonstration. I thought the meeting very 
quiet indeed." 

"I am sure," answered Herbert, "that the 
preacher was very much warmed up. And he 
said some extravagant things." 

"Hofte of which I can recall," replied his sis- 
ter. " The sermon was clear, convincing, prac- 
tical and strong." 



The Story of a Revival. 155 

Aunt Sarah ventured in her mild way to ask 
Herbert if he u had really found as much excite- 
ment as he expected ; " and his father, who was 
not a little impressed by the sermon of last even- 
ing and much hurt at Herbert's unreasonable- 
ness, added, "And w r ould you not have liked it 
a little better if there had been more noise and 
demonstration? Would you not have been 
gratified by some absurd occurrence which you 
might have reported here this morning? I 
frankly confess," continued his father, "there 
was nothing to which I could possibly take ex- 
ception last night. There was no noise. There 
w r as no interruption at any moment of any 
speaker or leader in prayer. My son, are you a 
slave to prejudice?" Herbert being in the 
minority, even his father having deserted him, 
and being compelled to confess to himself (never 
so quietly) that he w T as a little prejudiced, 
dropped the subject for the time, and the family 
was scattered for the work of the day. 

Herbert S. Topatome w r as ill at ease. Under- 
neath his gay exterior and dashing manner 
Herbert had a conscience. He knew the " let- 



156 



Our Own Church. 



ter" of the Holy Scriptures, and had caught 
glimpses of its spiritual meanings. His mother 
had placed her dying hand on his head and 
spoken a few very solemn words to him, which 
had been well-nigh forgotten in the whirl of 
society and the imperious demands of business. 
His father's indifference had deadened his relig- 
ious sensibilities. He believed theoretically in 
religion, but in religion as an actual factor in 
every-day life he had no interest. It was good 
for Sundays, good for church services, good for 
sick-rooms, good for women, and good for fu- 
nerals, but he preferred religion in books and ser- 
mons and sacraments, and did not want it to in- 
terfere with his fun, occupy his time, head him 
off from social indulgencies of every kind, or in 
any way come in between Herbert and Herbert's 
self -gratification. He sometimes regretted that 
his father was a Methodist. " I wish our family 
had been something else," he said. " I wish we 
were Episcopalians. They don't care what 
young people do. But Methodists are so fear- 
fully strict and exacting." 

Then came to him the picture of his dying 



The Story of a Eevival. 157 



mother ; her white face and wonderful smile ; 
the tones of her voice so remarkably sweet and 
clear; the w T ords of pleading she uttered, and 
then the last glance from the closing eyes, a 
sudden smile, a breath, a silence — O, how long 
that silence ! Herbert remembered that she had 
been a Methodist, liberal, high-minded, patient, 
refined, self-sacrificing, fond of her own Church, 
and in fullest sympathy with its spirit and regu- 
lations. Thus his mother held him to the Church 
of her youth and age. Mothers do have this 
power of control. It does not end when they fall 
asleep and go into their graves. Indeed, mother 
is sometimes most eloquent and her influence 
most effective after her lips are sealed in death. 

It is a great thing to be a true mother. It 
is a great thing for the Church where mothers 
are loyal to it. These facts and reflections will 
prepare us to appreciate the struggles in Her- 
bert's soul as he shut the door of his home that 
morning and hurried down town, to forget, in the 
excitement of buisness, himself and his " morbid 
feelings," and the irritating conviction of the 
breakfast-table. 



158 Our Own Chubch. 



Mr. Brand, the teller in Mr. Topatome's bank, 
who had always sympathized with Herbert's dis- 
like for " obtrusive, demonstrative, and experi- 
mental religion," had himself been at the meet- 
ing the night before, and had " risen for prayers" 
and had stayed to the " after-meeting." He had 
been powerfully impressed by the arguments 
and appeals of the evangelists, and had taken a 
step which he had thought he could never under 
any circumstances take. He had yielded to the 
inner voice and openly proclaimed his unrest of 
soul, and had professed a desire to come out be- 
fore the world as a seeker of the Christ-like 
spiiit. By a very rapid movement of thought 
and will, under the divine guidance, he had 
come out of darkness into light. His convic- 
tions were sharp, his desire genuine, his resolve 
prompt and positive, his faith simple ; and be- 
fore ten o'clock that evening Brand, the captious 
and worldly, full of doubt and fond of caviling, 
had been brought into the clear light of a relig- 
ious experience. He said to the minister after 
the meeting ; " It is all wonderful to me. I 
doubted, but now I believe ; I scofied, but now 



The Stoey of a Eeyiyal. 159 



I praise ; I knew in a general way the truths of 
the Gospel, but they never took hold of me as 
they have to-night, and now I shall live for 
higher objects. I am through with doubt and 
self -gratification. I am through with the indul- 
gences which the Church and the world both 
call worldly, and I am determined, by God's 
help, to live for something worthy of the immor- 
tal soul." These were words of honesty and 
of sharp conviction. 

Brand meant what he said, and when Her- 
bert S. Topatome came into the bank the morn- 
ing after, he was surprised at the greeting given 
him by the teller. 

" Are you crazy, Brand ? " he asked. 

" Wild," said Brand. " I believe I could go 
shouting through these streets this morning." 
And the smile on his face quickly told Herbert 
that his old companion had found " peace." 
Somehow the smile reminded Herbert of his 
mothers smile when she lay with the gates of 
heaven opening above her. 

To parry the stroke which Brand's new 
movement had aimed at Herbert the young 



Our Own Church. 



fellow asked, " Are you beside yourself, 
Brand ? 55 He did not wait for an answer. In 
his inmost soul lie coveted the peace that 
Brand had found ; but his nature was full of 
resistance and pride, and in that soil " objections 
do most rankly grow." 

Mr. Brand had been " converted." He had 
" turned over a new leaf." He had " come to 
himself " and returned to his heavenly Father's 
presence and favor. He had begun "a new 
life." He was " going to be a Christian and a 
Methodist." These are some of the expres- 
sions on the tongues of saint and sinner in the 
community as the news of Brand's surrender to 
God was reported. It was a remarkable change 
in a good sort of a man, who was well-known 
in the village, and it was accepted as proof that 
the " work " was genuine and the evangelist 
sent of God. The logic may not have been 
flawless, but the facts were impressive, and not 
a few skeptics were struck dumb. 

Hattie was happy enough when the ne^vs 
reached her. It was a great triumph of grace. 
It was a vindication of the "revival" efforts 



The Story of a Kevival. 161 



which the Church she loved had put forth. It 
was a new agency likely to help her in her 
prayers and labors for Herbert. It turned his 
arguments into ashes. For a time it took all 
the scorn out of his lips and voice. How much 
one soul can do ! Brand was a thoughtful and 
well-read man. His very silence on religious 
subjects had fortified Herbert's growing skepti- 
cism, His common sense justified the young 
fellow's contempt for excitement. Herbert 
would reason with himself, "Here's Brand. 
Nothing of the kind moves him. He is a 
scholar, and a level-headed fellow, and has force 
of character. If there w r ere any thing in relig- 
ion he would approve it. As it is, he ignores 
it, and sometimes laughs at it." But now 
Brand had deserted him ; had gone over to the 
ranters ; had taken sides with preacher, evangel- 
ist and the Church ; had himself gone into 
talking religion, and praying, and setting good 
examples. The change was a salutary one for 
Herbert. No wonder that Hattie w T as happy 
over it ! 

"It is a mere impulse," said Herbert. 
11 



162 



Our Own Church. 



" Brand wont hold out. A few days from now 
he will be regretting it. So it will be with the 
majority of the converts." So spoke Sir 
Herbert to " Saint Hattie," as he called her. 
"Begret what?" asked the saint. "Having 
made a fool of himself in this public way," 
answered the sage. 

"Now, Herbert, let ns look at that for a 
minnte," she said ; "let us see how he has made 
a fool of himself. What has Brand done ? 
He has acknowledged frankly in a public way 
and heartily the following facts : 

1. That there is a God, above all, author of 
all, who has a right to the love and obedience 
of his creatures. 

2. That there is a life beyond the grave, 
where we shall continue to know and love, and 
where character will determine what we do 
and enjoy. 

3. That the true life on earth is the life that 
is wisest, most loyal to duty, most full of faith 
in God and practical love for men. 

4. That the Bible is God's revelation of 
himself, of his will, of human duty and privilege. 



The Stoby of a Kevival. 



163 



5. That according to its teachings every man 
ought to repent of his sins, serve God, try to 
live according to the standards of the Book, 
and make his earthly life a sphere of prepara- 
tion for eternal life. Now where is the folly 
of faith in these five propositions? I cannot 

see it. Can vou ? " Herbert did not confess it 
«/ 

openly, but really he could not see the folly he 
had charged upon his friend. 

And as for the public demonstrations to which 
Herbert took exceptions, Hattie reminded him 
how like the talk of some of the old Pharisees in 
the temple his talk was, and she drew a picture 
of Herbert trying in the daj^s of Christ to stop 
the hosannas of the people when Christ entered 
the city in triumph. She then told him to apply 
his rule on the base-ball ground, and at lawn 
tennis, and in politics. In this way the dear 
child spoke more eloquently and effectively than 
she herself knew, and Herbert went down town 
with an angered and somewhat hardened heart. 

New victories at the evening meetings 
increased the power of the revival movement, 
and correspondingly increased the burden on 



164 Our Own Church. 



poor Herbert's soul. Brand was more cheerful 
than ever, and withal more profoundly ear- 
nest. The man was a changed man. Every 
body saw it. To no one was it more clear than 
to Herbert, who tried in every possible way to 
catch the new convert in some inconsistency or 
to silence him by some argument. Brand, under 
the sweet influence of unselfish love, was not 
easily betrayed into any word or act which was 
contrary to love ; and as for argument, Brand 
was on the right side, and poor Herbert's weak 
cavils could not stand against the words of 
truth and soberness. 

" It may be," said Brand, " that some of us 
will go back. Poor human nature does often 
recede from advanced and true positions. It 
does this in every thing else, why is it not pos- 
sible in religion ? This is no argument against 
the divinity of religion. It shows the weak- 
ness of human nature, and proves that the free- 
dom and responsibility of man are recognized 
in the Bible. Suppose I do go back. I have 
had a taste of the better life, and what I am 
for a short time I should be — and may be — all 



The Stoey of a Revival. 165 

the time. The brief experience makes it the 
more likely that I shall return to it. Is it not 
better that I should have the brief experience ? 
Is it not better for a man to be sober for six 
weeks than never sober ? Will not the speci- 
men of sober life be an incentive to a return to 
sobriety later on ? Ah, my young Herbert, 
you are walking in a dangerous path." 

These burning words did not subdue the 
heart of Herbert. We wish we could report 
his turning unto the Lord. The meetings 
closed. Brand went one way and Herbert 
another. So is it in life. So shall it be in 
eternity. We do not despair of Herbert. But 
some souls need severe discipline before they 
surrender. It may be so with him. Hattie 
must pray on and Brand live on and ministers 
preach on ; and mother's memory must still come 
into the poor wanderer's dreams. And some day 
we have hope that he will relent and repent and 
return. But it is for us to do our work and 
put our faith in God, and awaken men to duty. 
God has his plans. We have our appointments. 
Let us trust, and serve, and wait. 



APPENDIX. 



rpHE claim of the Ritualists is. that there are three distinct 
orders in the ministry, and that the highest, that of bishops, 
is in direct succession from the apostles. Methodist Episco- 
palians claim that there is no such " apostolic succession," ex- 
cept in doctrine, spirit, and life; that {> bishops" and " elders" 
(presbyters) were, in the New Testament, of the same order : 
that elders (presbyters) have a right to set apart of their own 
to the office of bishop ; and that when John Wesley, a duly or- 
dained elder (presbyter) of the Church of England, assisted 
by other Church of England elders, set apart Thomas Coke as 
superintendent (episcopos, bishop,) he exercised a right con- 
ferred upon him when he was ordained presbyter by John 
Potter, Bishop of Oxford ; a right for which precedents abound 
in Church history. One might fill whole pages with testimony 
on these points. I give here a few extracts : 

Irenceus declares that the succession, and together with it 
the episcopate also, had, down to this day (latter part of 
second century), descended through a series of presbyters, not 
of bishops. According to the testimony of this father — the 
best witness concerning the point in question — the powers 
now existing in the ministry of the Church are merely presby- 
terian, not episcopal. 

Jerome (in his note on Titus, chapter first) says : " Presbyters 
and bishops were formerly the same. . . . Let the bishops know 
that they are above presbyters rather by custom than by the 



Appendix. 



167 



divine appointment, and that the Church ought to be ruled in 
common." 

Augustine says : " The office of a bishop is above the office of 
a priest (not by the authority of Scripture), but after the 
names of honor which the custom of the Church hath now 
obtained." 

The celebrated Laud says : "I do not find any one of the 
ancient fathers that makes local, personal, visible, and con- 
tinued succession a necessary sign or mark of the Church in 
any one place. . . . Most evident it is that the succession 
which the fathers meant is not tied to place or person, but it is 
tied to verity of doctrine ." 

Bishop StiUingfleet says : " The succession so much pleaded 
by the writers of the primitive Church was not a succession of 
persons in apostolic power, out a succession in apostolic doctrine. 
Wc see evidently that it is the doctrine which they speak of 
as to succession, and persons no further than as they are con- 
veyors of that doctrine." 

Bishop Babbington says : " They are the true successors of the 
apostles that succeed in virtue, holiness, truth, etc., not that 
sit on the same stool. Faith cometh by hearing, saith St. 
Paul (not by succession), and hearing cometh (not by legacy 
or inheritance from bishop to bishop) but by the word of 
God." 

John Wesley wrote, February 25, 1*785: "Last autumn Dr. 
Coke sailed from England, and is now visiting the flock in the 
middle provinces of America, settling them on the New Testament 
plan, to which they all willingly and joyfully conform, being 
all united as by one spirit so in one body." 

In justification of his action in thus setting apart Dr. Coke, 
John Wesley says: "I firmly believe I am a scriptural episcopos 
as much as any man in England or Europe, for the uninter- 



168 



Our Own Chukch. 



rupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever 
did or can prove." 

On January 20, 1H6, be writes in his Journal: " I set out for 
Bristol. On the road I read over Lord King's account of the 
primitive Church. In spite of the vehement prejudice of my 
education, I was ready to believe that this was a fair and im- 
partial draft; but if so, it would follow that bishops and pres- 
byters are (essentially) of one order. 

Dr. Edgeworth, of the Church of England, says: " The priests 
(elders) in the primitive Church made bishops, and even like 
as soldiers should choose one among themselves to be their 
captain, so did priests (elders) choose one of themselves to be 
their bishop for consideration of his learning, gravity, and good 
living." 

Eutychius, a patriarch or bishop in Egypt, says: "The 
twelve presbyters constituted by Mark upon the vacancy of 
the see chose out of their number one to be head over the rest, 
and the eleven laid their hands on him, and blest him, and 
made him patriarch." 

Dr. Holland, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, says: 
" To affirm the office of bishop to be different from that of 
presbyter, and superior to, it is most false — contrary to Script- 
ure and the fathers, to the doctrines of the Church of England 
and the very schoolmen themselves." 

Dr. CJiapin, an authority in the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
declares that " the records of ordinations in the English Church 
from December 15, 1661, to 1705, 'are either lost or destroyed.' " 
Thus making "an utter blank in the records of ordination for 
forty-four years." And an able writer in America justly adds, 
after giving a full account of the ordinations of Seabury 
and Claggett, "It is perfectly manifest that there is not a 
minister to-day in the Protestant Episcopal Church who 



Appendix. 



169 



has the ordination which the canon law of the Church 
demands." 

Bishop Stillingfleet claims that the records of British succes- 
sion are destroyed. While Dr. Wharton and Dr. Barrow ac- 
knowledge the Roman succession to be untenable. Says 
Bishop Stillingfleet: "At Alexandria, where the succession 
runs clearest, the origin of the power is imputed to the 
choice of presbyters and to no divine institution." 

Bishop Grove says: "The doctrine of uninterrupted succes- 
sion is false." And Dean Comber "expresses his doubts as to 
the possibility of tracing up the succession with any certainty." 

A Protestant Episcopal clergyman. Dr. Richard Newton, 
writes concerning the "apostolic" claim of his own Church as 
it unchurches other communions: "The man who can main- 
tain it might as well stand forth at noon to-day and declare 
that there is no sun in the firmament, or walk out under night's 
sparkling canopy and deny that there are any stars in the sky. 
And when this position is affirmed by members of one of the 
smallest Protestant bodies in the land, there is a degree of 
arrogant assumption about it that admits of no defense. Nay, 
more, it seems to be a position that is justly chargeable in the 
sight of God with grievous sin. It approaches very near to 
the position which the Pharisees occupied in our Lord's day, 
when he charged upon them the sin against the Holy 
Ghost." 

Archbishop Usher, "a divine who had read all the fathers, 
whom the University of Oxford in convocation styled ' the 
most skilled in primitive antiquity, the unanswerable defender 
of the orthodox religion,' when King Charles I. asked him 
at the Isle of Wight wherever ho found in antiquity that 
presbyters alone ordained any, replied, ' I can show your 
majesty more, even where presbyters alone successively or- 



170 



Our Own Church. 



dained bishops,' and instanced in Hierome's words (Epistle ad 
Evagrium) of the presbyters of Alexandria choosing and making 
their own bishops from the days of Mark till Heraclius and 
Dionysius." The same Archbishop Usher also says: u A pres- 
byter hath the same order in specie with the bishop: ergo, 
the bishop hath equal intrinsic power to give orders, and is 
equal to him in the power of order." 

Lingard, one of the best English historians, says: "Nothing 
certain is known concerning the first promulgation of the Gos- 
pel in Roman Britain. The apostolic establishment by St. Paul 
has not the slightest historical ground. According to their 
own authorities, the English bishops and archbishops have the 
following record: 'From A.D. 596 to 1533 (the date of Cran- 
mer's consecration) fourteen archbishops of Canterbury were 
consecrated immediately by the popes, and many of these 
popes the bloodiest and most cruel monsters that ever cursed 
the world. From Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, to Cranmer, there were sixty-seven incumbents of that see. 
As noticed above, fourteen of these were consecrated immedi- 
ately by the popes, three by cardinals of the Romish Church, 
and all the rest by men who had themselves received popish 
ordination. Thus the very line of bishops through whom this 
succession must be traced were themselves ordained by the 
ecclesiastical body which the Church of England in her homi- 
lies designates 'a foul, filthy, old,' etc. . . . There was not an 
ordained man in the English Church from Augustine to Cran- 
mer — for nine hundred and thirty-seven years — who did not 
receive his ordination direct from the papacy. Thomas Cran- 
mer, father of the Liturgy and Articles of Religion of the 
Church of England, and from whom every preacher in the 
Protestant Episcopal Church has his ordination, was himself 
consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by the authority of the 



Appendix. 



popes, and after the most submissive and cordial recognition 
of the pope's supremacy/' 

A trustworthy authority says : tl Presbyters consecrated pa- 
triarchs in the Church of Alexandria for two centuries after 
the apostles. On this ground, when English bishops refused 
to ordain his preachers, John Wesley, in conjunction with two 
other English episcopally ordained clergymen, consecrated Dr. 
Coke to establish the Methodist Church in this land, and to 
consecrate and ordain bishops and presbyters. The custom of 
the Church of Alexandria has ample testimony. The Meth- 
odist communion can as rightfully claim an apostolic ministry 
as the Protestant Episcopal Church, unless we consent to 
throw the Church, of Alexandria overboard, the most learned, 
efficient, and influential of all the primitive Churches. The let- 
ters of Charles Wesley prove conclusively that his brother in- 
tended to confer episcopal authority in its usual acceptation." 

The same scholarly author avers that in the primitive patri- 
archal Church of Alexandria down to the time of the Council 
of Nice, the presbyters alone laid hands in the ordination of 
bishops, as Willet, Usher, Stillingfleet, Goode, Litton, Riddle, 
Stanley, Harrison, Lightfoot, Jacob, Mossman, and G-arrat 
among standard Episcopal writers charge ; and among ancient 
authors Jerome, Hilary, Eutychius, Severus, Elmacinus, Ama- 
larius, and Morinus testify. 

Lord Macaulay says : "Even if it were possible, which it assur- 
edly is not, to prove that the Church had the apostolic orders 
in the third century, it would be impossible to prove that those 
orders were not in the twelfth century so far lost that no 
ecclesiastic could be certain of the legitimate descent of his 
own spiritual character. And if this were so, no subsequent 
precautions could repair the evil. . . . We see no satisfactory 
proof of the fact that the Church of England possesses the 



172 



Our Own Church. 



apostolic succession. . . . What evidence, then, have we for the 
fact of the apostolical succession? And here we may easily 
defend the truth against Oxford with the same arguments 
with which, in the old times, the truth was defended by Ox- 
ford against Rome." 

On the impossibility of tracing this succession Lord Macau- 
lay speaks as follows: "The transmission of orders from the 
apostles to an English clergyman of the present day must have 
been through a great number of intermediate persons. Xow 
it is probable that no clergyman of the Church of England can 
trace up his spiritual genealogy from bishop to bishop, even 
so far back as the time of the Reformation. There remain fif- 
teen or sixteen hundred years during which the history of the 
transmission is buried in utter darkness. And whether he be 
a priest by succession from the apostles depends on the ques- 
tion whether, during that long period, some thousands of 
events took place, any one of which may, without any great 
improbability, be supposed not to have taken place. We have 
not a tittle of evidence to any one of these events. We do not 
even know the names of the countries of the men to whom it 
is taken for granted these events happened. Whether a cler- 
gyman of the Church of England is really a successor of the 
apostles depends on an immense number of contingencies such 
as these : Whether under King Ethelwolf a stupid priest might 
not, while baptizing several scores of Danish prisoners who 
had just made their option between the font and the gallows, 
inadvertently omit to perform the rite on one of these grace- 
less proselytes ? Whether in the seventh century an impostor, 
who had never received consecration, might not pass himself 
off: for a bishop on some rude tribe of Scots ? Whether a lad 
of twelve did really, by a ceremony huddled over when he was 
too drunk to know what he was about, confer the episcopal 



n Til HP. OT 



Appendix. 173 



office on a lad of ten ? It is as impossible for a minister of our 
day 10 prove that he is in direct succession, as to prove that 
he has lineally descended from Ahab and Jezebel. And if it 
could be made out, in the language of Hooker, ' there may be 
jtist and sufficient reasons to allow ordination to be made with- 
out a bishop.' " 

Dr. G. A. Jacob, of the Church of England, says: "What 
forms an absolutely conclusive refutation of this dogma is the fol- 
lowing consideration: The succession of the Jewish priests 
was distinctly laid down by Divine authority from the begin- 
ning; and reiterated commands, enforced by the severest judg- 
ments, emphatically declared that no one who was not of the 
seed of Aaron might officiate at the altar of God. Nothing 
but a Divine command expressly given could ever make such 
a regulation imperatively exclusive. Nothing but a direct and 
positive ordinance of the New Testament could justify the as- 
sertion of such a doctrine now. But in the Christian dispensa- 
tion no such command was ever given; nor is titer e in the New 
Testament the slightest intimation, much less an authoritative an- 
nouncement, that such an apostolic succession is the only source of 
lawful ministerial authority. The subject, in fact, is not once 
mentioned or alluded to in the Christian Scriptures ; nor are the 
apostles ever shown to have themselves received, or to have given to 
others, .any such power as this dogma asserts to have been trans- 
mitted." 



i 



INDEX. 



Apostolic succession, 8, 20, 167-173. 
Church, Holy Catholic, 5-8, 12. 
Church, Protestant Episcopal, 10. 
Church, Roman Catholic, 6, 7. 
Class-meetings, 49-64. 
Culture, 116-127. 
Itinerancy, 65-76. 
Liturgy, 140-145. 

Methodism, Antiquity of, 13-20; Unworldly, 21-32; 

Breadth of, 33-48; Earnest, 77-88; loyalty to 

Church, 104-115. 
Oxford League, 125-127. 
Probation, 5. 

Revivals, 134, 135, 146-165. 
Sacrament, 89-103. 
Taste, 128-145. 



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